Ridley Scott’s Complicated Philosopher Kings

Tags

"Philosopher King", "The Cave", alien, Alien Covenant, Blade Runner, David, Deckard, Dr. Eldon Tyrell, Edward Gibbon, Film, film review, Gladiator, history, King Baldwin IV, Kingdom of Heaven, Literature, Livy, Marcus Aurelius, Maximus, Metamorphosis, Ovid, Peter Weyland, Philosophy, Plato, Plutarch's Lives, Power, Prometheus, Ridley Scott, Rise and Fall of the Roman EMpire, science fiction, Tacitus, The Crown, virtue, War with Hannibal

Russel Crowe avenges Dumbledore after Johnny Cash asphyxiates him and assumes control of the Roman Empire, though that still doesn’t explain whether Tyrell or Weyland corporation was responsible for the synthetic tigers he fought in the coliseum.  The reader may not understand this point, but trust me, Ridley Scott’s films are really just one big universe of interconnected characters and events.  This has tons of continuity implications for the Alien franchise and that Robin Hood movie nobodyexcept for Max von Sydow and my mother actually went to see, but I’ll get to that later.

I’m not sure what honestly compels me anymore.  My brain seems awash with ideas and thoughts and desires and cravings, and every now and then one of these chaotic messes of thoughts formulates into an action.  This is just my way of saying I don’t know why I bought a copy of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius on Amazon the other day.  I believe part of it is because I have a friend who’s part of the bi-weekly graphic novel group Ground Zero Comics hosts, and because the pair of us talk pretty regularly.  He also works for the City of Tyler, and so I seem him fairly often, and when I doI usually talk to him about history and science fiction, and recently he’s begun commissioning statues of roman deities from our 3D Printer at the library.  I’m ecstatic that someone besides me wants a bust of Zeus, much to the chagrin of my fellow library employees.  I asked him the other day, out of curiosity and also out of a sense ofawkwardness because I generally feel that I bore people when I talk to them, why he liked Rome so much.  It took him a second but his honest answer was, “The world was new.  It was being built.”

This just seemed to click with me and I’ve been processing it ever since.  Sitting on my desk in front of me every day when I write is the three volume set of Gibbon’s Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.  It rests between Plutarch’s Lives, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Tacitus’s Annals of Imperial Rome, Livy’s War with Hannibal, and of course Simon and Schuster’s Guide to Insects, because, well, it’s me.  But these classical works sit in front of me everyday and I don’t often read them, a fact which is bothersome and also rather illuminating.  I appear to have become one of those people: the kind who use books to say something about their personality without actually bothering to open them and make something of a personality for themselves.

Meditating on my own aesthetic, and my own penchant for ancient Rome was an excuse however to finally write about Ridley Scott again, because after finishing my rather brief analysis of Kingdom of Heaven (2000 words is brief by my standards anyway) I realized there was more to be said about the film, and my favorite character King Baldwin IV.

Kingdom of Heaven is not just a misunderstood film about the Crusades and religion in general, it’s also a fascinating study on the conflict of power which has often dogged the “Holy Lands” and how in the face of these struggles one is able to maintain integrity.  The film follows a young blacksmith named Balian of Ibelin who inherits a plot of land in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and before he actually goes to rule he is invited by the King of Jerusalem, a man by the name of Baldwin IV who has, arguably, one of the most powerful entrances of any of Scott’s characters:

King Baldwin IV: Come forward. I am glad to meet Godfrey’s son. He was one of my greatest teachers. He was there when, playing with the other boys, my arm was cut. It was he, not my father’s physicians, who noticed that I felt no pain. He wept when he gave my father the news… that I am a leper. The Saracens say that this disease is God’s vengeance against the vanity of our kingdom. As wretched as I am, theseArabs believe that the chastisement that awaits me in hell is far more severe and lasting. If that’s true, I call it unfair. Come. Sit.

[they sit down on opposite sides of a chessboard]

King Baldwin IV: Do you play?

Balian of Ibelin: No.

King Baldwin IV: The whole world is in chess. Any move can be the death of you. Do anything except remain where you started, and you can’t be sure of your end. Were you sure of your end once?

Balian of Ibelin: I was.

King Baldwin IV: What was it?

Balian of Ibelin: To be buried a hundred yards from where I was born.

King Baldwin IV: And now?

Balian of Ibelin: Now I sit in Jerusalem, and look upon a king.

King Baldwin IV: [Baldwin chuckles] When I was sixteen, I won a great victory. I felt in that moment I would live to be a hundred. Now I know I shall not see thirty. None of us know our end, really, or what hand will guide us there. A king may move a man, a father may claim a son, but that man can also move himself, and only then does that man truly begin his own game. Remember that howsoever you are played or by whom, your soul is in your keeping alone, even though those who presume toplay you be kings or men of power. When you stand before God, you cannot say, “But I was told by others to do thus,” or that virtue was not convenient at the time. This will not suffice. Remember that.

Balian of Ibelin: I will.

I watched the scene again on YouTube, discovering in the comment section that not only had Baldwin been played by Edward Norton, but also that someone had labeled Baldwin here a Philosopher King.  I admit I know nothing of the real King Baldwin IV of which the character is based, but I do know something of this title and it’s history.

It has been some time since I last read it, but Plato’s Republic is a book that I’m sure most readers have either read snippets of, or at least heard of the book.  It is one of the many Socratic Dialogues the man wrote during his lifetime, and in it the man allowed his teacher Socrates to muse on the nature of power and society.  “The Cave” metaphor is the component of the text that many writers, readers, academics, and philosophers have latched on to, and in fact some have made the case that The Matrix was just a reimagining of this old concept, but contained also in the text is the idea of the “Philosopher King.”  This figure was exactly as the title suggests, a monarch of a fictional kingdom that, because of his position as a philosopher, would bring great benefit and strength to his kingdom because he is a man in love with wisdom and knowledge.  A Philosopher, in the classical sense I suppose, is someone who is calm, patient, in love with a simple life, and desires only to learn as much as he can, and because of this knowledge and virtuous lifestyle, he is an ideal candidate to rule a nation or people because he will not be swayed by valor, ambition, greed, lust, or vanity.

I remember being 15 years old when the film came out.  Well in fact I remember being a young teenager, I cannot in fact actually remember being 15.  Such a reality now seems impossible.  But I do remember the sense of awe in watching Kingdom of Heaven, and the eloquence with which Baldwin ruled himself and his subjects.  He was the sort of leader I would want for my country, if not my species period.

It was looking at Baldwin then, that I began to observe that Ridley Scott often has such characters in his films, men who seem to be philosophers and who hold great positions of power.  But upon closer inspection the question I began to ask is, are they really?

Looking at the film Gladiator, one of my mother’s favorite films by the way, Russel Crowe is a quote “hunksickle”, Scott actually goes to the trouble to actually make the first real recognized philosopher King a central character.  Many historians have observed that Marcus Aurelius seemed to be the first real-life example of a “philosopher king” for the way he carried himself and Rome forward.  In Gladiator Marcus Aurelius, played by Richard Harris the man who would come to be Albus Dumbledore only a few years later for a new generation, is a wise and human man who understands the nature of his mortality as well as the nature of human beings.  Discussing the future of Rome with Maximus one can see his wisdom:

Maximus: Five thousand of my men are out there in the freezing mud. Three thousand of them are bloodied and cleaved. Two thousand will never leave this place. I will not believe that they fought and died for nothing.

Marcus Aurelius: And what would you believe?

Maximus: They fought for you and for Rome.

Marcus Aurelius: And what is Rome, Maximus?

Maximus: I’ve seen much of the rest of the world. It is brutal and cruel and dark, Rome is the light.

Marcus Aurelius: Yet you have never been there. You have not seen what it has become. I am dying, Maximus. When a man sees his end… he wants to know there was some purpose to his life. How will the world speak my name in years to come? Will I be known as the philosopher? The warrior? The tyrant…? Or will I be the emperor who gave Rome back her true self? There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish… it was so fragile. And I fear that it will not survive the winter.

It’s not bold to say that Gladiator is a film which actually portrays the figure of the Philosopher King as a man who wants only goodness and security for his kingdom.  Marcus Aurelius is a man who desires knowledge, but also stability for that is the sign of prosperity. He is a man who is concerned about the future of his people, and his country.

In this way Marcus Aurelius and Baldwin IV both seem then to be fine examples of Philosopher Kings, though this inevitably leads me to Dr. Edwin Tyrell and Peter Weyland.

Recently one of the two movie groups I’m a part of decided to watch the entirety of the Alien franchise.  This involved starting at Prometheus, then going to Covenant, and then resuming the franchise with Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, and Alien Resurrection respectively.  This was greeted with delight and frustration because while everyone in attendance is a fan of the film Prometheus, Alien:Covenant tends to inspire a revulsion that borders on apish feces throwing.  Despite the sever flaws in the second film, I recognized that Scott had really done something with these films, and the character of Peter Weyland, the terraforming trillionaire and synthetic humanoid producer is arguably one of the most important elements of the films.

The man is, without doubt, a figure with vision and sizable knowledge, but as the film progresses, Weyland is demonstrated to be anything but a benevolent philosopher. Though it was not contained in the theatrical cut, Scott did at one point include a “TED Talk” hosted by the character Peter Weyland, and it the man’s character is revealed:

Peter Weyland: [from TED Talks viral video] To those of you who know me: you will be aware by now that my ambition is unlimited. You know that I will settle for nothing short of greatness, or I will die trying. To those of you who do not yet know me: allow me to introduce myself. My name is Peter Weyland, and if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to change the world.

This would at first appear to be a man with an ambition to benefit society tremendously, but as the talk continues Weyland’s greed appears dramatically: 

Peter Weyland: [from TED Talks viral video] T.E. Lawrence, eponymously of Arabia but very much an Englishman, favoured pinching a burning match between his fingers to put it out. When asked by his colleague William Potter to reveal his trick, how is it he effectively extinguished the flame without hurting himself whatsoever, Lawrence just smiled and said, “The trick, Potter, is not minding it hurts.” The fire that danced at the end of that match was a gift from the Titan Prometheus, a gift that he stole from the gods. When Prometheus was caught and brought to justice for his theft, the gods, well, you might say they overreacted a little. The poor man was tied to a rock, as an eagle ripped through his belly and ate his liver over and over, day after day, ad infinitum. All because he gave us fire. Our first true piece of technology, fire… 100,000 BC: stone tools. 4,000 BC: the wheel. 900 AD: gunpowder – bit of a game changer, that one. 19th century: eureka, thelightbulb! 20th century: the automobile, television, nuclear weapons, spacecrafts, Internet. 21st century: biotech, nanotech, fusion and fission and M theory – and THAT, was just the first decade! We are now three months into the year of our Lord, 2023. At this moment of our civilization, we can create cybernetic individuals, who in just a few short years will be completely indistinguishable from us. Which leads to an obvious conclusion: WE are the gods now.

One can almost hear Plato screech and Marcus Aurelius cast a resigned sigh of painful recognition. It seems at first a little difficult to say that Peter Weyland is not a true Philosopher King.  He is obviously a man of real knowledge and education, all of which would suggest he is a man in love with wisdom.  But upon examination it’s painfully clear that this acquiring of knowledge has not been simply for the sake of acquiring knowledge.  And for all his outward concern for the “benefit” of humanity, the final lines of his speech reveal the man for what he is: yet another in a long line of insects desperate for immortality.

I might perhaps be being a little negative, and it might be better to look at Dr. Tyrell of Blade Runner as well before coming to any final conclusions.  If my reader does not remember, Blade Runner was a film which explored the nature of humanity in a world where “Sythetics” or biochemically engineered human beings have been created and largely used as Slave Labor on “other-world” colonies.  A “Blade Runner” named Deckard is brought back onto the LAPD to terminate four rogue synths which escaped one suchcolony and made their way back to earth, and during his investigations he meets with the head of the Tyrell corporation, Dr. Eldon Tyrell.

Tyrell is a cold man who often appears guided by his own personal sense of charm as is emphasized in one memorable line:

Tyrell: Commerce is our goal, here. More human than human.

Apart from making me think of a great White Zombie song, this small line is real enough to damn Tyrell.  Commerce is not simpatico with being someone purely in love with knowledge, it’s the sign of an individual concerned with profit.  This is not to say a philosopher could not be a capitalist, but greed will blind a man to the truth and so weaken his personal strength.  And Tyrell only makes it worse after he allows his assistant to be interview by Deckard who recognizes that she is a synthetic.

Deckard: She’s a replicant, isn’t she?

Tyrell: I’m impressed. How many questions does it usually take to spot them?

Deckard: I don’t get it, Tyrell.

Tyrell: How many questions?

Deckard: Twenty, thirty, cross-referenced.

Tyrell: It took more than a hundred for Rachael, didn’t it?

Deckard: [realizing Rachael believes she’s human] She doesn’t know.

Tyrell: She’s beginning to suspect, I think.

Deckard: Suspect? How can it not know what it is?

To which it is revealed that Tyrell hasn’t told her.  Tyrell is presented as a man who is not concerned with empathy for the people he has created, nor would he even recognize them as people.  They are merely products designed to increase revenue and thus continue his existence as a leader of the world and thus insure his continued comfort and ego.

These four men together seem to embody the collected works of Ridley Scott, for while the man has created characters of real strength and virtue, he has also observed in humanity a real failing of character.  My question at the end of each of the analyses is not to make some blanket statement about Scott’s carear at large, but again to answer a simple question: can they all be considered Philosopher Kings the way Plato foresaw such a being in the republic.

In my own mind the answer has to be no, because Tyrell and Weyland are clearly not Philosopher Kings, they are merely men who have perused philosophy and settled more on the title of Kings.  Their ultimately failing is their desire to acquire some kind ofpower, and rather than benefit society in a true form or fashion, they create at the expense of others thus reducing their empathy and their real love of knowledge.  As Plato saw it the role of the Philosopher King would be not only to be intelligent, wise, and true to their humanity, but also to lead society into an ideal state akin to a Utopia.  Though looking at this it becomes clear none of the men cited in this essay really match that title.  And that’s largely because Utopia will always be impossible as long as human beings are hindered by their failings.

Greed, ambition, vanity, and desire will always bring about destruction in there world, and to Scott’s credit each of these films demonstrate how society and individual people can be impacted when any and all of these traits become the foundation of power in theworld.  In Kingdom of Heaven Baldwin died and a vain ambitious man began a war with the Saracen Muslims. In Gladiator Commodus murdered his father out of a desire to hold power and appear strong. In Prometheus and Alien Covenant Weyland wanted to live forever and be a god and this ultimate brought about the creation of David, a being who brought tremendous pain to humanity. And finally in Blade Runner Tyrell was a man corrupted by his greed and apathy, all of which caused the synthetics to be butchered by a man who himself was caught in the morbid conundrum of his own morality.

My reader may object at this point, so what?  What good is it wondering about four characters in fictional films and whether or not they satisfy some Classical archetype?  People suck, that isn’t new information, why should we bother worrying about the apparent goodness of fictional people?

These are all fair points, but as always my contester has missed something significant.  Yes these characters are fictional people (though Baldwin was based on an actual dude), but fiction has always been about truth, that abstract notion that there is an explanation of reality that we can tap into and understand.  The truth of the matter is, it’s through fiction that human beings are able to perform thought experiments where they can find their ideals, desires, expectations, and beliefs made manifest.  In this way Scott’s collected oeuvre of characters allows the reader to try and determine what they ultimately believe about power.  What kind of ruler or influential people would we want ruling the world?  And it doesn’t even have to be as complex as that, what kind of people do we want to be in charge of us.

Whether it’s the President of the United States, the CEO of Apple or Facebook, the mayor of your hometown, or whether it’s even your supervisor at Barnes & Noble or a public library, the people who govern and inspire influence matter in our lives because their morality and integrity can have great weight over our lives.  Good people will try to be good to those “beneath” them, and thus try to make the world, and their environment, better, whereas selfish and greedy people will only cause chaos and pain.  Rulers like Baldwin IV and Marcus Aurelius are the sort of individuals most people would want in charge because they seem to understand the nature of integrity, whereas Weyland and Tyrell couldn’t possibly be bothered.

I recognize that this may be a tough sell because the idea of a “Philosopher King” is obviously something antiquated.  Kings and monarchs are the stuff of bad CW programs and amazing Netflix series (check out The Crown, it’s legend-“wait for it”-dary) but power is the one constant of human existence and few directors have explored so incredibly as Ridley Scott.  

I still am left awed at the wisdom of King Baldwin IV, and of the man’s supreme concern for the safety of the people he reigned.  Though I am also deeply ashamed that it took me 14 years to see that the man had a thin mustache etched into the silver of his mask.  Wisdom is important, though observation as ever eludes me.

Advertisements

Makers and Gods and Egos, Oh MY!: Happy 200th birthday Frankenstein! Part 1

Tags

"More Human than Human", alien, Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049, creation, Creators and Creations, domestic affection, Eldon Tyrell, empathy, Engineer, Film, film review, Frankenstein, Frankenstein 200th anniversary, Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, horror, Literature, Mary Shelley, Niander Wallace, Novel, Peter Weyland, Philosophy, Prometheus, Ridley Scott, Robots, Science, science fiction, Victor Frankenstein, You cannot just put your hand in a goddamn beehive and act like you cool and shit that it some real noise son

I watched Blade Runner 2049 three times this year.  That’s three times I watch Jared Leto perform in what I would argue is his best read to date, and three times I watched Ryan Gosling stick his whole hand into a bee hive.  It might just be because I helped my father and sister collect honey this year and spent a good afternoon literally surrounded by swarming bees, but every time I watch his calm demeanor as he places his hand into the hive I can’t help but remember the sensation of watching close to a thousand bees buzz and fly around my face and I just want to yell “bullshit at the screen.”  I don’t though because it’s hard enough to find movies I feel are truly great, and that also use bees for aesthetic brilliance so I’ll bite my lip.

The sensation of working in a library is a constant feeling of being behind, or at least it seems so for me.  Working in the Reference department at the public library where I work there is always, until there isn’t, a project to be working.  There’s new displays that need to be made, promotional posters and graphics for said displays as well ads the new programs that are about to be started up, there’s the logistics of acquiring guest speakers and/or teachers for adult programs, and while I’m attempting to work with the rest of my library family towards these goals I can be expected to be interrupted, depending on the day and time, at least two or three times by patrons looking for books, patrons looking for information, and patrons needing to send faxes.  And with the exception of this last example (I loathe faxes with a passion I never knew I could ever actually feel) I never feel any frustration with my job.  I love my work because I stay so busy.  And looking at aproject a few of my coworkers are working towards I’m just reminded more and more why I have found, and chosen, a career in libraries.

Frankenstein turns 200 years old this year, and it being a novel I read prolifically during my college years, it seemed an excellent chance to look back to the novel, and look back also to a few films that seem terribly relevant as this foundational science-fiction novel comes to it’s anniversary. 

It doesn’t seem like Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049, and Prometheus would have much in common with Frankenstein, but having watched all three films this year, there’s just no way that I can’t make the argument.  In fact one one occasion I did.  Each of these films centers around the dynamic of the creation and creator relationship and each film manages to capture the same sense of corruption that Frankenstein originally inspired.

If my reader has never read the novel Frankenstein, first of all they really should because it’s beautiful, and second they should read it because the novel has remained, since it’s publication, a relevant document about the human condition in relation to scientific enterprize.  The novel is written as a series of letters by a man named R.Walton to his sister Delores.  Walton is a man driven to find a path through the north pole to achieve glory ever lasting, and while he fails at this task he discovers a young man in the ice named Victor Frankenstein.  Victor is chasing a giant, who Walton and his crew had spotted just the day before, who Victor eventually confesses is a living being created by himself.  Victor was a young man enraptured with the writings of alchemists, and upon the death of his mother and attending university where he learned everything was false he decides to overcome death by bring dead tissue back to life.  His experiment is a success, but he is horrified by his creation and the remainder of the novel focuses on Victor’s attempts to escape responsibility for his creation, while his creature (who is never named for the record) lives a miserable life wanting only to be loved.  The novel culminates in Victor losing his friends and loved ones to his creation and he eventually dies from the sheer exhaustion of following his creature to the literal ends of the earth.

What’s fascinating about the novel Frankenstein isn’t just that it’s one of the earliest science fiction novels, it’s a novel which really explored the vanity that lies at the heart of creators.  Looking at just one passage Victor Frankenstein’s hubris is as glaring as it is ridiculous.

No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success.  Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.  A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me.  No father could claim the gratitude or his child so complete as I should deserve their’s.  Pursuing these reflections, I thought, that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparentlydevoted the body to corruption.  (34).

I’ll admit freely that I have moments of vanity.  There’s nothing like checking the stats for this blog and seeing that I’ve had fifty or even sixty visitors on one day.  Similarly whenever friends confess they are in awe of the fact that I can read close to 100 books a year while they barely manage to fit in 3 or 4, there is a small twinge of ego that swells inside of me.  And finally, whenever I finish another page of my graphic novel that I’m slowly working on and show it to a friend I receive a real boost of confidence as they smile and tell me what they like about it.  These are moments of vanity, which is really just another way of saying, their moments where I celebrate myself and my achievements.  There is nothing wrong in celebrating the self, a lesson I’m trying everyday to remind myself as I overcome a lifetime of self-depreciation.

But hubris is endless vanity where one cannot perceive any personal fault and Victor Frankenstein’s hubris is the stuff of psychology graduate theses.  He is a man full of himself, and even after he realizes what he has done he never completely acknowledges his guilt.  In fact he denies his creation thus setting about a course of events whichdestroys himself and the people he loves.  It’s not just that he is selfish, it’s the fact that he doesn’t seem to really care about the fact that he is responsible for this new life.

And looking at this apathy I thought immediately of Dr. Eldon Tyrell and Niander Wallace from Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 respectively.  Both men are corporate moguls who have made a prosperous living from the creation and sale of humanoid robots known as synthetics.  These “robots” are ultimately human beings who’s bodies are effectively controlled by the corporations to live only a few years, and essentially act as slave labor for terraforming (colonizing new planets).  Both men are driven by the need to make the “perfect” organism, not becuse they desire the new life they are making to succeed and flourish, but because they are driven by an intense hubris.

Looking at the Eldon Tyrell there is a brief exchange between him and officer Deckard that reveals to what lengths he is willing to go:

Tyrell: We began to recognize in them a strange obsession. After all, they are emotionally inexperienced, with only a few years in which to store up the experiences which you and I take for granted. If we gift them with a past, we create a cushion or a pillow for their emotions, and consequently, we can control them better.

Deckard: Memories! You’re talking about memories!

And the real demonstration of his perception is clear when he says,

Tyrell: “More human than human” is our motto.

Tyrell is a man who is generating what most people would recognize as sentient life.  And rather than empathize with his creations he is seeing only the design flaws that will affect his business.  The language at first doesn’t seem to reveal this, but if the reader looks closer at the words what he’s clearly describing is the scenario that synthetic humans are essentially being made and then being destroyed by lunacy before any actual biological degradation.  To Tyrell these people losing their minds and destroying themselves and other is not something to be remorseful about, but instead is simply a design flaw that reflects poorly on his brand.  And in an effort to save financial face he creates memories and implant them into people’s minds.

This is barbaric enough, and then the reader encounters in the sequel a man by the name of Niander Wallace.  Following the death of Eldon Tytrell in the first Blade Runner Wallace purchases the company after making billions in agriculture developments that have saved the population of the planet.  Along with this he has also proven to be a capable leader in the terraforming movement specifically by using synthetic humans as slave labor.  Wallace is a man who has achieved something incredible, and rather than relish what he has achieved he is driven by a real god complex.

In one scene the reader observes the birth of a synthetic human, a woman specifically who, while she is trembling in the shock of being born is examined by Wallace.  While feeling her body the man complains that human beings have only colonized nine planets before remarking on the limitations of his synthetics:

Niander Wallace: That barren pasture. Empty, and salted. The dead space between the stars.

Niander Wallace: [He places his hand on the newborn Replicant’s womb] Right here.

Niander Wallace: And this is the seed that we must change for Heaven.

[He slices her womb]

Niander Wallace: I cannot breed them. So help me, I have tried. We need more Replicants than can ever be assembled. Millions, so we can be trillions more. We could storm Eden and retake her.

Niander is a man compelled by his vision to transcend mortality, but this ultimately reveals that, as he has acquired more and more personal power, and as he has generated more and more synthetic people he has stopped seeing them as anything other than robots.  The fact that he is so willing to kill a sytnthetic, literally minutes after she is born reveals that he sees them as nothing but products.  It’s not even a violent act in his mind because the woman is nothing to him, just another in a long line of products that will generate revenue.

And looking at just one more example, Prometheus offers the reader another fantastic example.  Peter Weyland, a man I’ve written about before is a man who a titan of industry as he has, like Tyrell and Wallace, made a fortune by creating synthetic human beings that aid in terraforming operations.  In a scene that did not make the theatrical cut of Prometheus, Peter Weyland address a stadium sized crowd and discussestechnology.

Peter Weyland: [from TED Talks viral video] 100,000 BC: stone tools. 4,000 BC: the wheel. 900 AD: gunpowder – bit of a game changer, that one. 19th century: eureka, the lightbulb! 20th century: the automobile, television, nuclear weapons, spacecrafts, Internet. 21st century: biotech, nanotech, fusion and fission and M theory – and THAT, was just the first decade! We are now three months into the year of our Lord, 2023. At this moment of our civilization, we can create cybernetic individuals, who in just a few short years will be completely indistinguishable from us. Which leads to an obvious conclusion: WE are the gods now.

Prometheus is a film which explores the ideas of life, creation, apathy, and what is the role of the creator in our existence.  Human beings are revealed to be the design oforganisms known as engineers, massive humanoids that, upon waking, elect to destroy humanity and create something new in it’s place.  This apathy for creation ultimately brings about their destruction and the humans that survive the onslaught are left wondering why their creators despise them, or, more appropriately, why they felt nothing for their existence.

I’ll explore the idea of creations desiring compassion for their creators in the follow-up to this essay, but for now I wanted to look at some examples of the mad genius creatorbecause, since the publication of Frankenstein this character is something of a recurring trope.  Even if it is not science fiction there is still often the dynamic in literature, and unfortunately sometimes in real life as well, of one individual essentially breaking and making another and feeling nothing for the creation they have made.  Victor Frankenstein is a man who wants to become a god, but rather than assume any personal responsibility for his creation, or his creation’s actions, he falls back upon his ego and self-pity.

What connects men like Frankenstein, Tyrell, Wallace, and Weyland is not just their apathy however.  All of these men are defined first and foremost by their hubris, and by their conviction that they are somehow above their creations and fellow human beings.  In a later passage Victor is speaking with Walton, and the reader is able to observe that the man suffers no real regret for his accomplishments because he cannot look past his ego:

“When younger,” said he, “I felt as if I were destined for some great enterprise.  My feelings were profound; but I possessed a coolness of judgement that fitted me for illustrious achievements.  This sentiment of worth of my nature supported me, when others would have been oppressed; for I deemed it criminal to throw away in useless grief those talents that might be useful to my fellow-creatures.  When Ireflected on the work I had completed, no less a one than the creation of a sensitive and rational animal, I could not rank myself with the heard of common projectors.  […]. I trod heaven in my thoughts, now exulting in my powers, now burning with the idea of their effects.  (167).

Victor Frankenstein is a man who believes that he is special, and, by that implication, more important than other people.  This is vanity, and while that word gets thrown around a lot, it’s important to remember than the vain person is one who believes themselves superior and therefore above other people, and when someone is obsessed with the self it becomes difficult to realize faults.  Victor cannot and could not perceive himself at fault because he could not see anything that was truly outside of his own mind.  Because he isolated himself, because he failed to allow himself domestic affection, and because he would not allow himself to observe anything outside of his grand personal vision of himself he brought about the destruction of his life and the lives of those closest to him.

Frankenstein, Tyrell, Wallace, and Weyland are not just empty tropes, their examples of people who allowed themselves to look at themselves as gods, and that behavior had real implications for the people who lived “beneath” them.  In real life there are Victor Frankensteins and Eldon Tyrells; there are men who believe themselves to be above their fellow human beings, either because of their talents, wealth, or personal beliefs.  And so the real life implication of such men is that many people wind up suffering.

The lesson of Frankenstein, Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049, and Prometheus is that creation is not simply an empty act.  By bringing something into existence you assume a real responsibility for it.  Whether it’s a painting, a novel, an essay, a company, a robot, oreven a synthetic human being, creators cannot simply abandon their work or become apathetic to what they have made.  They own a responsibility to that creation and to those who encounter it. 

Victor Frankenstein wasn’t a nrillionaire, terraforming other worlds, and in fact he only ever made one living creature.  But the impact of his creation has reverberated 200 years after him.  Mary Shelly’s novel has never been out of print since its original publication in 1818, and the reason is rather simple: in the course of 200 years human beings haven’t stopped looking up to the stars wondering if they might supplant the gods, and neither have they stopped looking into the water and, like Narcissus, becoming enraptured with their own reflection.  A million rocket ships and a million new worlds or even millions of robots are nothing compared to the sheer power of the human ego. 

And we are, all of us, left wondering when we’re going to figure out when we’ll get a decent Frankenstein or Alien film again.

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes cited from Frankenstein were quoted from the paperback Longman Cultural Edition, 1818 version.  All quotes cited from Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049, and Prometheus were provided care of IMDb.com.

 

**Writer’s Note**

I’ve provided a few links to some articles which discuss the novel Frankenstein in case my readers would like to read some work about the book by writers who can afford editors…and food.  Anyway, enjoy:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-strange-and-twisted-life-of-frankenstein

https://www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2016/jun/16/what-frankenstein-means-now

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/archaeology-and-history/magazine/2017/07-08/birth_of_Frankenstein_Mary_Shelley/

Kingdoms of Madmen Devoid of John Ham or Virtue: Kingdom of Heaven

Tags

An-Nasir Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, Brendan Gleeson, Edward Norton, Eva Green, Film, film review, Ghassan Massoud, history, Jeremy Irons, Jerusalem, King Baldwin IV, King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, Liam Neeson, Marton Csokas, Oliver Bloom, Overly Sarcastic Prodctions, Politics, religion, religious corruption, Ridley Scott, Saladin, Stronghold Crusader, The Crusades, virtue

I right clicked, and sent a thousand archers to their doom.  I had no cavalry, no knights, no footsoldiers, no pikemen, and not even a single swordsmen to assault the pillars of the Caliph.  The die had been cast, and my men would burn.  I lost a good three hundred men to the pitch that burned their flesh alone, and I lost a hundred more to the ballistas and the fire-throwers that manned the towers alongside a legion of archers.  Yet despite all this, I took the castle that day, and the Caliph was felled by almost six hundred men firing arrows at him until his hit-points were finally exhausted and I crushed him.

This, in a nutshell, was the experience of my puberty.  And I’m not sorry for one minute of it.  Stronghold Crusader taught me a lot about medieval warfare, about the difficulty of sieging a fortress, about the precious commodity of iron, about the pros and cons of hiring mercenaries, about the difficulty of feeding an entire population on nothing but apples and bread.  The game appeared in my life and then consumed it rather quickly as I would spend, literally, hours in front of a monitor leading troops to their deaths, and sometimes victory, in a battle for the Holy Land, or, as is far more accurate, for fertile territory where I could grow more crops and mine more iron so I could be rich enough to wage more war in the first place.  This latter admission becomes a fascinating parallel moment to the past, as the Crusades were, as time went on, really just efforts in self-interest and personal gain.  I wish I could say Stronghold Crusader pushed me to begin reading more and more about the Crusades, and while I will admit I did perform some cursory internet research, I was far, far more interested in playing video games.

Still, youth is more about establishing foundations that building great wonders that last throughout adulthood, and the young man I was fostered a life-long fascination with the Crusades.  This fascination manifested in some interesting reading, but more than anything else it provided the foundation for a love of one my favorite films of all time: Kingdom of Heaven.

Now right off the bat I’m sure my regular reader will have an objection.  Kingdom of Heaven is a film which is largely condemnatory about religion, why isn’t this a “letter to a young atheist?”  And since I’m an atheist is this essay just going to be a long rant about how religion is stupid and dangerous?  Because if it is, I’m not terribly interested.

These are fair points and worth addressing because, yes, I am an atheist, and I do nothing to hold back my contempt for faith and religion in whatever form it manifests.  Religion is an infantile disease founded in the infancy of our species to explain natural phenomena that we lacked the language and methodology to explain.  It has also largely been a Misoginist tool used by sadists to acquire political and economic power throughout centuries allowing a manipulation and outright abuse of common people.  To put it another way, religion just fucking blows man, but that’s not what this essay is ultimately about.  Though I am living a godless existence (I don’t even read the Bible, not out of some lofty philosophical position, but honestly it’s just fucking boring as fuck), Kingdom of Heaven is a beautiful film period and I’ve always wanted to write something about it.

The film follows an English blacksmith named Balian who is visited by a Crusading Knight Baron Godfrey.  Balian has recently lost his wife to suicide, and Baron arrives announcing that he is the man’s father and would like Balian to forgive him his sins.  Godfrey leaves and Balian is left in the village when a local priest informs him that the village does not want him and that his wife is in hell.  Balian kills the priest and escapes to join Godfrey who himself is mortally wounded when the castle guard comes to arrest Balian.  The party eventually arrives at the shores of Italy where Godfrey passes his title, sword, and knighthood to Balian before sending him to the Holy Land where Balian quickly becomes one of the most outstanding lords of the realm in due in large part to his kindness and devotion to the people.

Kingdom of Heaven is complex film because it is layered in developed characters who regularly  question the nature of virtue, religion, society, and the services the powerful owe to the weak in society.  This complexity often is centered in one character, who is also for the records dear reader, my favorite character in just about the entirety of Ridley Scott’s creative Universe King Baldwin IV.  Balian is invited to meat the King of Jerusalem, and when the reader first observes his character one is left spellbound, at least if you’re me:

King Baldwin IV: Come forward. I am glad to meet Godfrey’s son. He was one of my greatest teachers. He was there when, playing with the other boys, my arm was cut. It was he, not my father’s physicians, who noticed that I felt no pain. He wept when he gave my father the news… that I am a leper. The Saracens say that this disease is God’s vengence against the vanity of our kingdom. As wretched as I am, these Arabs believe that the chastisement that awaits me in hell is far more severe and lasting. If that’s true, I call it unfair. Come. Sit.

[they sit down on opposite sides of a chessboard]

King Baldwin IV: Do you play?

Balian of Ibelin: No.

King Baldwin IV: The whole world is in chess. Any move can be the death of you. Do anything except remain where you started, and you can’t be sure of your end. Were you sure of your end once?

Balian of Ibelin: I was.

King Baldwin IV: What was it?

Balian of Ibelin: To be buried a hundred yards from where I was born.

King Baldwin IV: And now?

Balian of Ibelin: Now I sit in Jerusalem, and look upon a king.

King Baldwin IV: [Baldwin chuckles] When I was sixteen, I won a great victory. I felt in that moment I would live to be a hundred. Now I know I shall not see thirty. None of us know our end, really, or what hand will guide us there. A king may move a man, a father may claim a son, but that man can also move himself, and only then does that man truly begin his own game. Remember that howsoever you are played or by whom, your soul is in your keeping alone, even though those who presume to play you be kings or men of power. When you stand before God, you cannot say, “But I was told by others to do thus,” or that virtue was not convenient at the time. This will not suffice. Remember that.

Balian of Ibelin: I will.

When I first saw the film I had never seen Lawrence of Arabia, I had no idea King Baldwin was being played by Edward Norton, and I had no conception that the King wearing the White robes and that metal mask was in fact based on a real human being.  I was simply struck by the tragedy and beautiful humanity of a character who seemed, in the face of such overwhelming personal tragedy, aloof to his own suffering.  Suffering, as his plight was, was not as important as being a good man and ensuring that the people of his realm were led by decent people.  King Baldwin IV stuck with me, partly because Scott portrayed the character as a “philosopher King” in the vein of Marcus Aurelius, but more because his values were that of a man who simply wanted to make the world a better place.

Kingdom of Heaven continually returns to this theme placing virtue as something opposed to religion.  Religion is often something that breeds malice, envy, contempt, or far too often excuses for bloodshed.  Balian, as soon as he reaches Jerusalem, visits the hill of Golgotha to try and settle his peace with god and the death of his wife, and finding nothing but silence and emptiness he informs Hospitaller, one of the knights who accompanied his father, that he has “lost my religion,” prompting both the following conversation, as well as your friend Greg to start singing REM.

Hospitaller: I put no stock in religion. By the word religion I have seen the lunacy of fanatics of every denomination be called the will of God. Holiness is in right action and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves, and goodness. What God desires is here

[points to head]

Hospitaller: and here

[points to heart]

Hospitaller: and what you decide to do every day, you will be a good man – or not.

There is some part of me that worries at times that Kingdom of Heaven is in fact just one long series of beautiful speeches, syllogisms, aphorisms, and religious meditations, but for all of the criticism of fanaticism and the corruption of the doctrines of religion the film does manage to help the characters to come to some sense of themselves.  Though these previous conversations are really one sided they serve to help build Balian into the virtuous man he becomes.  Balian often has few lines, but that’s not a weakness on his part.  Being a blacksmith he’s become a man of action rather than a man of words and speeches and contemplation.  Balian acts to build a well on his new lands, to help his subjects dig the holes, to help them lay the agriculture that will provide them with food, to defend the civilians who attack the castle of Renault de Chatillion by charging into the Saracen Cavalry, to defend the city of Jerusalem when Saladin’s army begins their march to it.  

Balian’s actions matter and in this way Ridley Scott is able to demonstrate a real fundamental truth: virtue is in action, rather than ideology.

In the end Balian becomes the sort of figure a Crusader was ultimately supposed to be.  And this becomes painfully Clear when he addresses the army of Jerusalem as they are preparing for the ultimate siege.

Balian of Ibelin: [to the people of Jerusalem] It has fallen to us, to defend Jerusalem, and we have made our preparations as well as they can be made. None of us took this city from Muslims. No Muslim of the great army now coming against us was born when this city was lost. We fight over an offense we did not give, against those who were not alive to be offended. What is Jerusalem? Your holy places lie over the Jewish temple that the Romans pulled down. The Muslim places of worship lie over yours. Which is more holy?

[pause]

Balian of Ibelin: The wall? The Mosque? The Sepulchre? Who has claim? No one has claim.

[raises his voice]

Balian of Ibelin: All have claim!

Bishop, Patriarch of Jerusalem: That is blasphemy!

Almaric: [to the Patriarch] Be quiet.

Balian of Ibelin: We defend this city, not to protect these stones, but the people living within these walls.

I right clicked and sent a thousand archers to their own destruction, and while it’s absurd to compare a computer game to the realities of the actual Crusades, I don’t believe it’s a step too far to observe that my motivations weren’t that far off from what the Crusades actually became about.  By the time of the Fourth Crusade Christians had stopped even bothering going as far the Holy Land and simply stooped to burning the city of Constantinople and razing the city for the hope of personal gain.  The struggle for the “Holy Land” became about securing personal wealth rather than being virtuous and declaring a conviction to god.  

Kingdom of Heaven is a film I have watched well over ten times, and having recently purchased the directors cut on Blue-Ray I was able to show the film to my little sister for the first time.  This was slightly discombobulating given the fact that she’s a historian (and a medievalist to boot), but it was also a chance to see how my appreciation of the film has deepened.  Ridley Scott is an incredible director and I want to dig deeper into this film again, but for now my impression on rewatching the film was just an appreciation for the fact that the film is not just an empty bashing of religion, but instead a film about someone who wants to be a good man and who learns from other good men what real virtue is.

Balian of Ibelin: What man is a man who does not make the world better.

It’s a simple statement that at first appears to be nothing but a piffy aphorism, but upon inspection this statement has power.  If one is held by the principle that one should try to make the world a better place, then a series of small actions will build to something great.  If the Crusades had been held by such a conviction they may not have been eventually settled on as a great example of human beings fucking up in monstrous ways, they might have in fact have been remembered as a victory of the tenants of Christian philosophy and ideology.

But as always the Kingdom of Heaven is elusive, and I need at least 700 more archers before I attack Duc Truffe The Pig.  Those crossbowmen are mean sumbitches.

 

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes cited from Kingdom of Heaven were provided by IMDb.

 

**Writer’s Note**

Being an avid fan of history, and a nerd, I tend to spend my time reading and watching films, but also listening to other nerds talking about things that they are pretty nerdy about.  One of my favorite nerd programs is Overly Sarcastic Productions, and in between the videos about The Aeneid and Vikings I watched a video hosted by Blue about the Crusades.  It’s most definitely worth your time and will provide the reader with a far more nuanced and entertaining backstory about the Crusades than my work.  If you’re at all interested you can follow the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZhyDIIkeLo

 

***Writer’s Note***

This is still, arguably in my opinion, the sanest argument about the “Holy Land” that I have ever heard in my life, not to mention one of the best delivered lines in cinema history:

Patterns and Shapes of a Silent Cyber-Punk World: Blade Runner & Blade Runner 2049

Tags

Alien Covenant, Bee Hives, Bees, Benjamin Walfisch, Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049, Blade Runner Threeway, climate, Denis Villeneuve, dystopia, Eraserhead, failed environment, Film, film review, Hans Zimmer, Harrisson Ford, Hitchcock-Truffault, Jared Leto, Language of Cinema, Literature, memory, Place, Prometheus, Ridley Scott, Robert Osbourne, Robots, Ryan Gosling, science fiction, Sexual Fantasy, Sexual Rhetoric, Sexuality, Space, TCM

Is Blade Runner a silent movie?  I’m seriously asking.

I recently, well not recently, I usually write these essays and then sit on them for a month and then upload them to WordPress and then sit on them again while I publish other essays, and so what was once “Recent” at the time of writing was actually months ago.  My “process” aside, if you can call it that, I did take the time to watch the film Blade Runner this year with a group of friends.  I’m a hermit by nature who tends to enjoy his isolation because it gives me time to read what I want and watch the movies that I want without having to worry about what’s new with the people I spend my time with.  But, I still recognize that part of self-preservation is having some kind of social contact with people who aren’t my cats and dogs and immediate family members.  That and the demon who lives on my bookshelves voted for Trump and won’t let me forget about it.

It’s hard to find people that I actually like, mostly because of the territory I live in.  When you’re a bisexual atheist in a town with more churches than restaurants you pick your friends carefully.  I have a great circle of friends who tend to be open-minded and, even better, have great taste in movies. As such I joined their movie-group and on the week that it was “science fiction classics” I picked Blade Runner, as did my friend Annie who’d never seen it before, and fortunately enough, our movie got picked.

Surrounded by the endless xenomorph collectibles in Michael and Victoria’s apartment I watched a film I’d already seen somewhere around twenty or thirty times reciting the iconic lines of the Final Cut, while TJ and Michael spoke them aloud with me.

It wasn’t this viewing that led me to my question however, because not long after watching the original film, I took my wife to see the sequel film Blade Runner 2049.  I can honestly say that I’ve never been so terrified to see a movie.  Blade Runner is an important film to me, and I’ve seen lately how Ridley Scott has attempted to expand some of his previous films with sequels and prequels, successfully with Prometheus, and tragically with Alien Covenant.  I was waiting for Ridley Scott and the director Denis Villeneuve to turn the Blade Runner universe into something akin to a Marvel movie where characters are nothing but action figures and product endorsement.

The movie started.  The music rolled.  And two and half hours later I was crying because I hadn’t seen a film that sublime since Eraserhead.

Part of me was tempted to write out a full review of the latest film because I’m not being facetious when I tell my reader that I was floored by the movie.  I haven’t seen anything like Blade Runner 2049 in my life, but what stopped me immediately is that I rely on quotes provided by IMDb to support my reviews and essays, and as of this writing there are barely any quotes on IMDb.  This is frustrating initially, but as I reflected on the film
again something struck me.  Unlike the first Blade Runner, which managed to have a few long stretches of dialogue here and there, Blade Runner 2049 did not.  It’s a common occurrence during the film for there to be long moments in which nothing is actually spoken and the reader is left viewing the world which is often presented in wide shots that demonstrate the care and attention made to architecture, color, light, and sound.  During one shot in which K and Deckard are fighting in a ballroom in the ruins of Las Vegas, the hologram projections of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and show-girls flicker in and out of existence providing only snippets of sound.  It’s not that there isn’t any speaking, talking, or music during Blade Runner 2049, it’s just that after a while the reader becomes aware that the world and the design of the world, coupled with electronic music that honors the original film tend to be far more important than any of the dialogue.

In fact, much like a David Lynch movie, the dialogue is just another sound in this universe.  And so looking back to the original Blade Runner my question feels terribly important: Are the two films actually just silent movies?

I anticipate my reader’s response: No, they aren’t.  The films are filled with music and sounds and silent films are, by their nature, devoid of sound.  So how could it possibly be a silent movie?

This is a fair argument, but at the same time it is plagued by the actual histories of Silent Films.  While it is true that Silent films got their accurate title by the lack of sound in their final composition, Silent Films over time were usually accompanied by some sort of music.  It was common for movie houses to hire musicians, usually paint players, to play tunes that matched the emotional language of the film and this have evolved since their apparent irrelevance.  Silent films that are released on Dvd and Blue-Ray, or else played on TCM (We miss you Robert Osborne) are always accompanied by some kind of musical score.  My little sister’s copy of Nosferatu includes two different scores, one of which is a horrifying as fucking-fuck organ.  And recently when I checked out a Blue-ray of Metropolis I discovered it was a remastered cut in which the producers had sampled hit songs from Eighties pop bands to play over the film.  This is all just a way of saying that Blade Runner 2049 and Blade Runner, despite the sound in their films, could be construed as Silent Films.

While watching these films I am able to follow the characters and their emotional journeys, however watching the films I am usually far more concerned with listening to the almost New Wave music that plays throughout the film.  Vangelis, who produced the music for the original Blade Runner, manages to create a world that, while it isn’t dying, is more electronic than it is real.  Along with his score, which manages to balance sound and silence brilliantly, are the various sounds which make up the world.  When Deckard is studying the details of a photograph the clicking of the computer and the various switches broken by his drunken “enhance” let the reader disappear into the film.  Watching the original Blade Runner, at least to a contemporary audience, is like listening to the sounds and world of a video game.

Benjamin Walfisch, Hans Zimmer, the composer’s of Blade Runner 2049 push the reader into a different direction, because in the world Denis Villeneuve creates, the world is dying, but it’s lingering.  The music tends to envelop the reader as they watch the film to the point that one feels constantly that the sound is entering them.  This world that exists, which is only thirty years older than the time of the original story, seems to be entirely made of sound.

And this idea of sound leads me next to design because watching Blade Runner 2049 I was struck by Villeneuve’s concern of place.  Having watched a few Silent movies, and I do mean few, I’m usually struck by the concern for visual detail.  Part of this might have been fortunate accident on the part of these filmmakers, however it is important to remember that many of the great masters of the early genre of film created wonders the likes of which have only been dreamed of by many current film makers.  A film like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, yet another brilliant horror film from the early days of film which still manages to be actually terrifying, pays attention to the “place” of the story, allowing that “place” to become it’s own language.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a world that looks nothing like the “real” world, with it’s harsh geometric landscape and the pointed edges of the world, the reader is left constantly feeling like the world isn’t real, and yet, at the same time, they are entirely convinced by the vision.  Blade Runner 2049, and the original Blade Runner manage this same trick.

Watching Blade Runner 2049 is watching color and shapes and often, sex.  Unlike the original Blade Runner, which always alluded to sexuality (what exactly is a “pleasure model” I ask you) without coming outright and showing it.  Sex was something that was implied, whereas in 2049 there is sex out in the open and the reader is often reminded of it.  Whether its the holographic “Joi companion,” the prostitutes servicing men behind thinly veiled screens, the outright sex scene where Joe “becomes” the prostitute, or else the constant concern with the idea of procreation sex is constantly part of the landscape of Blade Runner 2049 culminating with K’s initial walk through the ruins of Vegas.

But along with sex the reader will constantly be bombarded with color and design and Villeneuve succeeds in making an entirely new world.  Los Angeles is a world of color and advertisements and sounds, but it’s always in the Wallace corporation headquarters that the viewer is left naked on the shores of a new world.  The offices, which tend to look more like the inside of Egyptian pyramids, are designed almost completely with stone and water, one room being nothing but a small island in a room filled with water which shines reverberating light across the walls.  Even if language is spoken in these rooms, it’s obvious over the course of time that the words are immaterial.

The rooms do all the speaking.

The original Blade Runner followed this pattern, though often not to the same extremes.  Color tended to be the stronger language and whether it was the freezer where Chew made the eyes, Tyrell’s private room decorated with gold and columns, or else if it was the Doll Room of Sebastian’s home colors created their own language.  The designs of these rooms, and the details packed into them often allowed for the dialogue to be rather secondary if not irrelevant.  Even if you heard batty asking Sebastian to help him into Tyrell’s office, the reader was probably more concerned with Prius’s make-up or else the way Sebastian’s home was a menagerie of toys, robots, and rotting walls.  When Deckard is walking through the streets of Los Angeles the color of the light-up umbrellas, or the asian script made up of neon lights manage to tell the viewer more about the world than any of the later exposition.  If nothing else about the “place” manages to capture the reader, then surely the ever-present rain should be enough to create the feeling of the world and what it is about.

Both of the Blade Runner films try to create a “place” before they create the characters that interact in this space because it’s the world that’s the important character.  Part of
this is surely because it’s a science fiction movie and so the environment needs to be established so that the reader can feel like they are entering a new world.  Watching the movies though I am struck more by the concern for creating a world because, at the end of the day, this speaks more to the “language” of cinema.

Better directors and cinema critics than I have explored this idea, and if the reader wants a great exploration of this they should read Hitchcock-Truffault.  There is a language of cinema, often referred to as visual language.  It’s a damn near impossible phenomena to describe in words but the idea is that the visual direction of films is a language unto itself and so the way a director arranges the Place and space, and then the way they move the camera through this world can communicate it’s own sort of message about humanity.  This is not an alien concept I suspect for most people.  If a camera zooms into a person’s face after they have heard news of their lover dying then most people would understand the message of the shot.  Likewise if they see a director holding the camera still while two people eat in silence the scene will have it’s own meaning and context.  This idea of film creating its own language is something which has existed since the early silent film era, and directors and artists have tried to build that language into something meaningful since the establishment of the medium.

Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 continue to discourse because both films, while they do have characters and story and dialogue which create a story, are films more rooted in the tradition of the language of cinema.  The images and lights and colors are far more important because they communicate more about humanity than most of the dialogue.

I think that’s why, as I was watching Blade Runner, and then Blade Runner 2049, I was left so emotionally impacted by both films.  Seeing these movies I felt like I was watching directors who understood that a film is not just about telling a story with words, because even though I am a writer I recognize that words can only go so far.  Sometimes, if I can quote Seth McFarlane here, music is better than words.  Colors and sounds and images can have more emotional impact upon an individual viewer, and they can also illicit strong emotions.  Watching Blade Runner 2049 I wasn’t watching a sequel to a great science fiction movie, I was watching a film that was trying to do more with the language of film.

Blade Runner 2049 is a film about the human condition, about the ideas of power and procreation, about the loneliness of souls, about what a father can give to his children, about the injustice of slavery, about the death of the world, and about the future of humanity in a landscape where symbol becomes more powerful than the individual human being.  These are powerful ideas, and watching the film I found far more message in the colors and geometric patterns of light than I did in most of the dialogue.  I recognize that the reader may not share my sentiments, and that they may find the new Blade Runner film an overly long exploration of a universe, but hopefully they will still recognize that the composition of Blade Runner 2049 is unlike any other film produced in the last decade.

Film is a medium unlike any other because the images that are being passively received can have a spirit and language all their own.  Blade Runner 2049 is a beautiful reminder then that artists can, and should, take care to worry about the what the images in their films can mean for the sensation of the viewer.

The Silent Film may have reached a point where it no longer bears any real relevance to the mass audience, but the concern for the language of cinema is still an idea which has persisted and influenced movie makers for generations.  It may not seem like it, but a man shoving his hand into a bee hive in the ruins of Las Vegas, or the same man staring up a giant hologram advertisement for a sexual hologram says more about the condition of humanity than most movies dare to.

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

This idea about the “Language of Cinema” is an important one, and so I’ve found a few great videos on YouTube which explore and explain it.  I’ve posted them here because I like to offer my reader supplementary materials, but also because there are people in the world who are far, FAR better at explaining concepts and ideas than I am.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK1trQBa_2g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I90ZluYvHic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUrTRjEXjSM

Along with this are several links to articles and YouTube Videos which explore facets and elements of the movie Blade Runner, just in case the reader was interested in digging deeper into the film.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-significance-of-eyes-in-Blade-Runner

http://bladerunner.wikia.com/wiki/Themes_in_Blade_Runner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sd818GIdNM0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVUjHTwIPvY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXRlGULqHxg

**Writer’s Note**

I’ve also included a link to an interview hosted by NPR with science historian Howard Markel who explores the history and etymology of the word Robot

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/22/135634400/science-diction-the-origin-of-the-word-robot

Frozen Eyes and Self-Repair: A Complex Emotional Reflection about Eyes and Blade Runner

Tags

"replicants", Blade Runner, Cyber-Punk, Daryl Hannah, Deckard, degeneration, dystopia, Eye Imagery in Blade Runner, Eyes, Film, film review, glasses, Harrisson Ford, John Lennon Vs Harry Potter, mortality, Pickle Rick, reflection, Rick and Morty, Ridley Scott, Rutger Hauer, science fiction, self-repair, slavery, Tyrell Corporation

It’s been six years since I got my first pair of glasses.  That would make me twenty-two at the time, and it’s a lovely realization that the loss of my virginity would coincide with my ability to see.  It wasn’t long after getting my glasses that I decided to get a hair-cut (I looked something along the lines of Slash and Cousin It’s love child) and shortly thereafter my wife, who I had known because she sat behind in biology class, accepted a date that eventually became the most significant relationship in my life.  The glasses that I bought not only served as my ability to see, they also managed to serve a secondary purpose: aging the individual who compliments them.  I post a lot of photos of myself on this blog, and so my reader is able to see I wear thin wire frames in the shape of perfect circles.  I’ve noticed that people really seem to like them and I’m used to people offering compliment in the vein of “I love your glasses.”  However they don’t just say this.  As I said before my glasses “date” the person offering the compliment because one half of them will usually say, “I love your Harry Potter glasses” while the other half says, “I love your John Lennon Glasses.”  This second compliment has started to dwindle and so I have to remind people about this second person.  It’s because of John Lennon that I picked these glasses in the first place, but I was part of the Harry Potter generation and I’m actually rather terrified of the day when people stop calling them Harry Potter glasses for that would mean I’m becoming a rather old man.

None of this would really explain why, going to the optometrist again recently I was inspired to write about Blade Runner.

Sitting in the chair that offered no lumbar support I looked around the room.  There of course wad a chart filled with photos of various eyes suffering from a wide range of disorders and disease.  To my left were the binocular machines which would test my vision.  And to my right was the doctor who was telling jokes that could only come from a refreshingly dry humor that’s impossible to find in this territory.  The thought of eyes though inspired me to think back on the film Blade Runner which I had watched again recently with a group of friends.  There was something about eyes that I kept going back to.

This association isn’t unfounded because eyes play a critical role in the film because the way to determine the difference between a Replicant (the name for the humanoid slave robots) and humans was something called a voight-kampff exam which is an eye exam.  You also have the fact that the film begins with an eye looking over a wide city-scape.  When Batty, the central replicant who wants to extend his life, confronts his maker Tyrell he murders him by digging his thumbs into the man’s eyes before cracking his skull.  There’s also the scene in which Batty confronts Hannibal Chew, a genetic engineer who makes eyes, and one of the other replicants slowly places eyes on his bare shoulders and Batty offers up this brief exchange:

Batty: Yes!

[smiles]

Batty: Questions… Morphology? Longevity? Incept dates?

Hannibal Chew: Don’t know, I don’t know such stuff. I just do eyes, ju-, ju-, just eyes… just genetic design, just eyes. You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.

Batty: Chew, if only you could see what I’ve seen with your eyes!

The examples of this constant eye imagery and association could fill up an entire word document so it’s not necessary to list them all out.  I simply want my reader to recognize that it was probably because of this frequent eye imagery that I began to think again about Blade Runner.

The film has, since its release in 1982, become a cult classic and an icon of both science fiction and film noir.  It doesn’t hurt that the film was directed by Ridley Scott when the man was in his prime of his carear and riding high off of the success of the film Alien which had been released just three years earlier.  On one side note there existed this beautiful period of great science fiction movies that, while I won’t say hasn’t been repeated, just hasn’t been matched in my estimation.  Watching Blade Runner is an experience unlike any other because the film creates a new world in which the viewer is left to disappear completely into.  The darkness of the city is matched only by the near constant neon lights that seem to illuminate only the figures of the people moving about the place.  Advertisements tend to be more real than the human beings walking around because despite their mass-production reality, there’s a human charm to them.  The near constant rain becomes not just an atmospheric aesthetic, but part of the landscape of the world.  And all of this combines together to establish a place that was labeled as “cyber-punk” that has helped create a new genre in and of itself of science fiction.

Blade Runner takes in the distant future of the year 2019, which is a disappointment in and of itself because humanity has barely managed to acquire workable iPod minis let alone advanced robotics.  The Tyrell corporation has created humanoid robots known as “replicants” which serve mainly as payless workers (slaves, let’s call it what it is), and the story begins when four replicants escape the off-world colonies.  A former police detective named Rick Deckard is brought back onto the force in his former position of Blade Runner.  His job is to hunt down the replicants and terminate them (kill them, let’s call it what it is.  The rest of the story follows Deckard as he tracks down the replicants who are themselves trying to sneak into the Tyrell corporation to see if there is a way to extend their lives since Replicants are controlled by a four-year life-span.

Batty is the leader of the replicants, played brilliantly by the elusive Rutger Hauer, and as driven more than any of the group to find some way of extending his life.  Throughout the film there are small shots of his hand trembling while looking like dying tissue, and I believe it’s this idea of degeneration that actually inspired me.  Going to the eye doctor is repair; it’s a check to make sure the system can still run.  While my hand doesn’t regularly crinkle into a trembling fist which is itself a portend for my ultimate death, I have observed the fact that my body is beginning to show some signs of wear.  And thinking of such wear I’m immediately reminded of the therapist monologue in the Pickle Rick episode of Rick and Morty:

I have no doubt that you would be bored senseless by therapy, the same way I’m bored when I brush my teeth or wipe my ass.  Because the thing about repairing, maintaining, and cleaning is, it’s not an adventure.  There’s no way to do it so wrong that you might die.  It’s just work.  And the bottom line is some people are okay going to work and some people, well, some people would rather die.  Each of us get’s to choose.

Choice is everything, and so as I contemplated the degeneration of the body while I sat in the doctor’s office, looking at those eyes on the chart, I thought about Blade Runner and how the idea of choice and time and repair becomes so wrapped up in our ideas of memory.  Who I am is built upon my memories, and those in turn shape who I want to be and become.  And so as I sat in the chair paying attention to how terribly my eyes had degenerated I wondered about what new glasses I would get, and what famous celebrity or fictional character people think about when they saw my new specks.

 

 

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes taken from Blade Runner and Rick and Morty were taken from IMBD.  The definition of Robot was provided  are of the Etymology Online Dictionary

 

**Writer’s Note**

I’ve included here a link to the Pickle Rick episode, specifically the therapist monologue that I’ve quoted here.  Unlike the Twitter Troll Bots who seem to rail constantly against the new season and the writing thereof, I can’t help but remind them that Pickle Rick is evidence enough of how amazing this season really is.  If the reader would like to hear the monologue in its entirety they can do so by following the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUHECxS6IEU

 

 

What Gods Are Men That Feel Such Pride?

Tags

"More Human than Human", "What knockers!", Alchemy, Ego, Engineer, Epistolary Novel, ethics, Fall Out 4, fear, fear of death, Film, film review, frame narrative, Frankenstein, George Gordon Lord Byron, Harry Potter, horror, isolation, Literature, Margot Robbie, Mary Shelley, Novel, Parents, Percy Shelley, Peter Weyland, Philosopher's Stone/Sorcerer's Stone, Prometheus, Ridley Scott, Robert Walton, Robot, Science, Science Ethics, science fiction, The Institute, Victor Frankenstein, Young Frankenstein

 

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay

To Mould me man?  Did I solicit thee

From darkness to promote me?—

—Paradise Lost, Milton

For the record the best Frankenstein film to date remains Young Frankenstein.  The line, “Wow, what knockers!” will be carved on the edifice of time even if I have to fight to my last breath.  Then again Wishbone was my first introduction to Frankenstein and he was, and probably still is, the best Victor Frankenstein in cinema history.  I remember watching the film for the first time with my dad, and true to form he would often whisper the line before the actor or actress would.  This habit, which I happened to pick up from the old man, may be annoying to some but I enjoyed it and still depend on it for it’s one of the traits that makes my father the man he is.  Saying the lines early always impressed me as a kid, because it seemed like dad possessed some kind of special knowledge about the world that I didn’t, and while that may sound corny I truly attest to the fact that it impressed the shit out of me.  One of the reasons I wanted to become an intellectual was because of Mom and Dad and Papa (my grandfather); because all three of them spoke with such knowledge about books, films, politics, history, and that knowledge was something I desired for myself.  I wanted to be the guy who knew and understood things.  I looked to my parents for guidance about what it meant to be a human being.

Every parent fucks up in some form or fashion, and this is partly the reason why I am avoiding becoming a parent as long as I can.  My wife has just signed on to become a high school teacher, and while I search for jobs and do everything in my power to avoid working in retail, she’s begun to talk about babies more and more as a concrete reality rather than abstract concept.  I don’t mind children for the most part, in fact most of the ones I’ve met are actually pretty fascinating, but I just can’t stand babies.  I also live in mortal terror of fucking my children up, because to be honest, I think there are more level headed men out there more qualified to be fathers than me.

The idea of parental responsibility reminds me that around three weeks ago I wrote a review of the movie Prometheus.  By the end of that essay I felt like I had mostly bounced around the real meat of the film rather than actually digging into a real analysis, but this is a familiar sensation whenever I write, and looking at it in hindsight I’m a little more forgiving of my work.  What gnawed at me while I was arranging the pictures was the idea that I had missed the chance to develop on more idea in the story which is the idea of parental responsibility, or more accurately creative responsibility.  This also reminded me of the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

It also reminds me my wife told me to stop posting pictures of Margot Robbie lest I suffer her immortal wrath, but she never reads any of my work anyway so I might as well indulge where I can.

If my reader is unfamiliar with the plot of Frankenstein it would not be terribly surprising for no director to date has managed to film an accurate retelling of the novel, and since most people watch television or movies rather than reading books it’s most likely that few if any actually know the real plot.  The history behind the book should be told first for it’s actually rather fascinating, or at least it’s fascinating to me.  The book itself came about because Mary, and her soon-to-be husband Percy Shelly, were visiting Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati in Geneva (this was shortly after Byron was “exiled” from Britain for having an affair with his step-sister).  During a particularly stormy night they decided to tell ghost stories, and after going to sleep, so the story goes, Mary Shelley was tormented by a nightmare of an inhuman eye opening at staring at her.  She began a draft of a story and Byron so loved it that he insisted she write the rest of it while he went with Percy off to the mountains, most likely so that the two of them could bang.

As a professor of mine once explained this is why the 1818 version is considered the more “accurate” version because in the re-writes in 1831 the character of Victor, who’s largely believed to be inspired by Percy, is presented as not so much of a douchebag.

The novel is told through three narrators and is presented through what’s known as frame narrative.  This is a framing technique used by some writers and probably was best used in the movie The Princess Bride.  The entire novel is actually written within a letter, making it an epistolary novel in case you forgot what your English Lit professor told you would be on the exam, written by a man named Robert Walton, an explorer who seeks fame and fortune by finding a new trading route through the Northwest passage.  His intentions possess some purity however, for while the glory would be nice, Walton’s desire is to help humanity and this intention will be seen again and not just in Frankenstein.

Walton writes to his sister:

I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man.  These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer ask fear of danger or death, and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river.  But, supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer upon all mankind to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many mortals are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, it at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine.  (6).

Walton’s ego is as apparent as his eventual failure, for men of passion have often dreamed of finding a passage through the north and failed miserably.  What’s important in this passage however is how Walton’s ego speaks before his intentions.  He speaks a great deal about his passions for discovery first before then recognizing and recording the larger benefit it will have on humanity.  This arrangement is revealing but also a recurring theme throughout the novel Frankenstein for almost every character possesses some kind of selfishness that drives their actions before their contemplation.  In a previous essay I spoke about the term metacognition, thinking about thinking, and looking over the novel it becomes clear that none of the characters take the chance to observe their behavior to determine its quality.  Looking at the protagonist Victor Frankenstein, his motivations are just as troublesome as Walter’s.

Victor is the son of a rich Genevan family, and from a young age the man is possessed by a fierce intelligence and a desire for knowledge.  During a family vacation Victor discovers the works of the medieval Alchemists, and because he wishes to become a scientist, he embraces many of the old masters.  Alchemists are something one usually only encounters in Final Fantasy games or else at a Wiccan convention, but if the reader doesn’t know what one is an Alchemist was something akin to a wizard or soothsayer.  Most of the “philosophy,” and I use that word lightly, has to deal with transmutation: the transforming of minerals and objects into other materials.  If the reader has ever read the Harry Potter Series the Sorcerer’s Stone, or to my British readers Philosopher’s stone (Americans generally distrust Philosopher’s yet not Sorcerers for some reason), the stone that is referenced and eventually found beneath Fluffy’s trapdoor is rooted in an ancient Alchemical concept.  Victor becomes absorbed in these medieval lessons reading voraciously until his mother dies of scarlet fever just a few weeks before he’s about to leave for the University in Ingolstadt.  While there he learns that all of his learning is outdated and new ideas such as physics and chemistry are replacing these old concepts, but Victor holds to his early learning eventually deciding to make a name for himself in defeating death.

Victor describes to Walton his motivations, after Walton finds him out on the ice during his ship’s travel north:

Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.  A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me.  No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve their’s.  Persuing these reflections, I thought, that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption.  (34).

Most people just take up Ultimate Frisbee during Grad School, though to be fair the people that do so are only moderately less of a douchebag that Victor.  Jokes aside this passage precedes Victor’s description of his life as he assembled the ill-fated and iconic “Creature” by robbing slaughterhouses, charnel houses, and even graves for body parts which he assembles in an apartment he rents out before eventually bringing said “Creature” to life.

At this point my reader may be wondering what’s the point?  So what if the characters in Frankenstein are ego driven jerks who wind up failing miserably?  What does that have to do with being a parent?

Before I can really answer that I have to look at the film Prometheus again.  I wrote and published an essay about the film recently and in that article my concern was to examine two themes in the film.  The first was how the film explored the origins of life, and the second was the notion of entitlement.  Looking back then to Frankenstein, these ideas are not only similar they’re almost exact replicas.

In a deleted opening scene to the film Peter Weyland is giving a stadium sized TED Talk about his company’s developments into cybernetics, and if the reader pays attention they’ll note a few similarities between his speech and Victor’s:

Peter Weyland: [from TED Talks viral video] 100,000 BC: stone tools. 4,000 BC: the wheel. 900 AD: gunpowder – bit of a game changer, that one. 19th century: eureka, the lightbulb! 20th century: the automobile, television, nuclear weapons, spacecrafts, Internet. 21st century: biotech, nanotech, fusion and fission and M theory – and THAT, was just the first decade! We are now three months into the year of our Lord, 2023. At this moment of our civilization, we can create cybernetic individuals, who in just a few short years will be completely indistinguishable from us. Which leads to an obvious conclusion: WE are the gods now.

Pater Weyland doesn’t play a significant role in the plot, in fact he only has a few moments in the actual film.  His character serves the important function however of mirroring Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway, the scientists who were looking for the Engineers hoping to discover the origin of life and determine where human beings actually come from.  Weyland’s desire is ultimately to overcome death, and while it’s never said out loud, Shaw’s motivation isn’t that different, but looking at Weyland in relation to Victor, both the novel and the film demonstrate a fundamental weakness of human beings: the fear of death.

Victor Frankenstein lost his mother just a few days before he left for the university and once he finds himself in a new environment, away from his family and friends, and is informed everything he has learned has been rejected as rubbish, the man retreats into himself.  Human beings are by nature a narcissistic species and it’s through interaction that we are able to overcome our sense of isolation and ego and develop a personality in relation to others.  Victor doesn’t develop any real connections outside of himself and so he decides to attempt to overcome death.  Likewise, with Peter Weyland, while he leads a massive intergalactic corporation his position isolates himself and so rather than finding some kind of solace in his relation to the rest of humanity he retreats into himself.  This isolation is what eventually leads to these men’s downfall, because rather than creating relationships that would provide a healthy outlet for their egos, they eventually are driven to perpetuate their existence through their creations.

By creating life however Victor becomes a parent, and in that title is an inevitability that I listed out before: every parent fucks up in some form or fashion.  Looking at Prometheus there’s two exchanges that reveal this.  Weyland has spearheaded the Cybernetic movement creating synthetic human beings like David.  Charlie, drunk and frustrated at the seeming failure of the mission, speaks to David:

Charlie Holloway: What we hoped to achieve was to meet our makers. To get answers. Why they even made us in the first place.

David: Why do you think your people made me?

Charlie Holloway: We made you because we could.

David: Can you imagine how disappointing it would be for you to hear the same thing from your creator?

Charlie Holloway: I guess it’s good you can’t be disappointed.

Later in the film, after Charlie has died and Shaw has removed the squid from her stomach, she talks with David:

Elizabeth Shaw: What happens when Weyland is not around to program you anymore?

David: I suppose I’ll be free.

Elizabeth Shaw: You want that?

David: “Want”? Not a concept I’m familiar with. That being said, doesn’t everyone want their parents dead?

Elizabeth Shaw: I didn’t.

Looking at Weyland and David there is no intimacy between the two men, and before my reader objects and says “He’s a flippin robot” I object that that is immaterial.

Over the last few months I’ve been playing Fallout 4, the latest science fiction game from Bethesda and in the game is an organization called The Institute.  Without starting a controversy, I have never found the Institute to be a sympathetic figure at all principally for the fact that, like Weyland Corp, the organization creates synthetic human beings and treats them like property rather than human beings.  Again my reader objects “They’re flippin robots” but once again I object.  There’s a difference between a drone and a synthetic human being made of meat and independent consciousness and the difference is the fact that we label the latter a “human being.”  Without resorting to too many clichés (specifically the old “more human than human”) humans imprint and replicate themselves upon the space and place they operate in, and as robotics has progressed two camps have emerged.  Boston Dynamics has developed humanoid robots designed for combat, and in Asia robotics is principally being channeled into the sex industry.  It’s clear that regardless of the purpose human beings will continue to follow the root etymology of the word robot which means slaves.  This is all just a way of saying that human beings are driven to create more realistic robots, but to that I ask the question:

To what purpose?  If creating robots is simply to improve our lives, what benefit can come about by having them “synthetic” human beings?  I don’t have an answer to this question other than what Charlie offered, “Because we can.”

Both Weyland and Victor end up attempting to overcome death out of mortal terror, and while doing so they end up creating monsters that wreak havoc upon humanity.  Rather than recognize the power they have created, and rather than recognize the humanity of their “children” they wind up Othering them and fleeing from their responsibility as creators.

Looking at the “children” in Prometheus and Frankenstein there is a remarkable similarity.  When the Creature speaks to Victor on the Glacier he wails:

Oh!  My creator, make me happy; let me feel gratitude towards you for one benefit!  Let me see that I excite sympathy of some existing thing; do not deny me my request!  (112).

And likewise when Weyland, David, and Shaw meet the Engineer she asks it:

Elizabeth Shaw: [to the Engineer] Why do you hate us?

Hopefully by now I have addressed my contester’s points.  The dynamics taking place in Prometheus and Frankenstein are those between creators and creations, parents and children.  Each tries to understand the nature of the other but in both stories there is too much of a power dynamic in place.  Rather than nurture or assume responsibility Weyland and Victor (and in some way the Engineers) pursue their egos hoping desperately that their creations will help them overcome the grim reality of death.

Weyland and Victor are ultimately just two scared men afraid of death and their “children” suffer for it.  Whenever I would read Frankenstein for school I was always taught that the key to Victor’s downfall was his lack of “domestic affection.”  I can’t honestly say that being affectionate to a robot would have kept Elizabeth Shaw from losing Charlie, or Victor being affectionate to his “Creature” would have spared Elizabeth, but the reader can be sure in the knowledge that loving their own children will pay off in the end.

It’s the time and self-sacrifice that matters, and, to be real here, changing diapers and singing along to Barnie CDs does wonders for reducing the ego to manageable levels.

 

 

*Writer Notes*

The Sorcerer’s stone/Philosopher’s stone, as mentioned above, was an object of fascination for many people, including Issac Newton.  While the man was rigidly held, almost dogmatically so, to the principles of Enlightenment reason between his discoveries and writings of mathematics he indulged frequently in alchemy trying to find the Philosopher’s stone.  The stone was supposed to hold the ability to transmute any known object into pure gold.

Now as to why American publishing companies wanted to change Philosopher’s stone to Sorcerer’s stone, the only explanation I can guess at is what I suggested in the essay.  Americans distrust Philosophers, because on the whole philosophers don’t get jobs.  Sorcerers on the other hand make people think about C.S. Lewis and Angela Lansbury which is sweet harmless fun…or at least it is until Preachers from the south believe the books are about witchcraft.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want, Prometheus: A White Tower Review

Tags

alien, Alien: A Film Franchise Based Entirely On Rape, Brett, class, Cracked.com, Dan Dietle, Dan O'Bannon, David, David in the Orrery, Engineer, Film, film review, Idris Elba, Michael Fassbender, Movies-R-Fun, Noomi Rapace, Origin of Life, Parker, Penis, Phallic Imagery, Prometheus, Prometheus Explained, Rape, Ridley Scott, science fiction, self-entitlement, Weyland Corp., Xenomorph

There’s one rule in Ridley Scott films: never trust the robot.  It should be noted that few protagonists or characters recognize this as a rule, and this typically leads to their downfall.

I remember early seeing advertisements for Prometheus and wondering to myself, “What the hell is that?”  When a friend later explained to me that it was a “Prequel” to the Alien series I was a bit intrigued, though somewhat hesitant since there didn’t appear any xenomorphs, Sigourney Weaver, face-huggers, chest-bursters, or the nasty broken down ship motif I had come to expect from the series.  Plainly speaking, I didn’t much care about Prometheus because Alien as a franchise was made up of fascinating films because they were so different than most of the science fiction I had encountered up to that point.  I’ve never been much of a fan of Star Trek, and the only reason I really love Star Wars is the everyman feel the franchise has going for it, but most other science fiction always felt too “clean.”  The atmosphere was always hundreds to thousands of years in the future and in that time man developed a way to dispose of waste so that his world was crisp, pristine, and devoid of grime.  This in turn meant that mankind in science fiction was always in a place where there was no difference in class.  Watching the first Alien there is a clear recognition that society hasn’t changed so that class isn’t an issue.  There are levels of workers on the Nostromo, ranging from science officer to ship engineers, and two of the workers Brett and Parker regularly bring this up.

One scene in particular seals this impression:

Parker: Uh, before we dock, I think we oughta discuss the bonus situation.

Brett: Right.

Parker: Brett and I, we think we oughta… we deserve full shares, right baby?

Brett: Right. You see, Mr. Parker and I feel that the bonus situation has never been on a-an equitable level.

Dallas: Well, you get what you’re contracted for like everybody else.

Brett: Yes, but everybody else, uh, gets more than us.

It may seem ridiculous but hearing people bitching about how much they’re getting paid was comfortable because it implied that while technology was advancing, human beings had not evolved with their technology and there was still something to connect with.  Part of this may simply be because I grew up in a middle class home, when there still was a middle class, but watching working-class people in science fiction always seemed more relevant than figuring out which of aliens Kirk was going to bang this week.

Another early impression of Prometheus was the absence of the consistent aesthetic and concept: rape.  It may seem ridiculous to the reader if they know nothing about the background and concept of the film, but the writer of the very first Alien was explicit and honest about his creative goal.  A few years back Cracked.com posted an article by Dan Dietle titled Alien: A Film Franchise Based Entirely On Rape.  Before I stopped reading Cracked regularly (the website got so buggy and slow after a while) this essay was forever one of my favorites because I had read few essays online that had such precision, and which shocked me so much.  Dietle actually quotes Dan O’Bannon directly and once the reader reads it they can’t unread it:

“One thing that people are all disturbed about is sex… I said ‘That’s how I’m going to attack the audience; I’m going to attack them sexually. And I’m not going to go after the women in the audience, I’m going to attack the men. I am going to put in every image I can think of to make the men in the audience cross their legs. Homosexual oral rape, birth. The thing lays its eggs down your throat, the whole number.'”

Alien was, and is, a film franchise surrounded, founded upon, and embedded with phallic and vaginal imagery to make the viewer aware of the implicated sexual violence.

Prometheus takes a different direction tackling the origin of life, and the dangers inherent to entitlement, but I should probably get back to the robot.

The character of David is one that, again, since he’s a robot in a Ridley Scott movie, the viewer should immediately distrust, but every time I watch the film I’m struck by his character and the real humanity he’s able to achieve.  My little sister for the record admits with no shame that David is her favorite character.  Part of it may simply be the, to quote the great philosopher Rob Zombie “More human than human” quality he exhibits, but while this is a cliché it’s not an unfair or unreasonable reason to like the character.  David is played by Michael Fassbender, a man who I may or may not have a crush on, but who also has established himself as one of the most important actors of his generation, and in many ways the creative successor of Peter O’Toole.  The fact that Fassbinder looks alarmingly like the man is no mistake, and Ridley Scott plays this up in the film by having David style his hair and body after O’Toole in the film Lawrence of Arabia.  David watches the film regularly, and quotes the film three different times during the film:

David: Big things have small beginnings.

David: There is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing.

David:  The trick William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.

David’s role in the film is not simply to quote other movies, for his presence and actual humanity sets itself against the actually human characters in the film, particularly Charlie Holloway the protagonist’s love interest.  Charlie is drunk and angry and David, eager to test a hypothesis about a black ooze discovered on the planet LV-223, brings Charlie more champagne.  Before he dips his finger, and the ooze, into the spirits, he asks Charlie a question:

Charlie Holloway: What we hoped to achieve was to meet our makers. To get answers. Why they even made us in the first place.

David: Why do you think your people made me?

Charlie Holloway: We made you because we could.

David: Can you imagine how disappointing it would be for you to hear the same thing from your creator?

Charlie Holloway: I guess it’s good you can’t be disappointed.

This is a brief exchange, and while the viewer is watching they’re most likely pre-occupied with the fact that David is tricking Charlie into drinking the black ooze, but this conversation does reveal a continuous idea explored throughout the work: where does life come from?

Ridley Scott has “explained” Prometheus in a few interviews, and it’s fortunate that he has since people like me tend to become frustrated having to explain the opening sequence.  A pale humanoid stands on a rock above a waterfall, a ship belonging to his people is ascending into the clouds while he drinks a black ooze.  He coughs, dropping the cup in the valley below him, and he watches as his veins turn black and his body begins to disintegrate.  The camera shows his DNA turning black before splitting apart before he finally falls into the water below.  Every part of the Engineer, for that’s the name of the creature, is dissolved but after a moment the viewer sees coils of yellow matter joining together to form a new Double Helix and this in turn creates single celled organisms.

This scene was one of the most misunderstood moments, and one of the books on my shelf Movies-R-Fun sums up the collected sentiment in one sentence:

I still find this funny because I largely had the same reaction when I watched the film in theatres, and even after watching the film three times I still didn’t have an answer.  A friend of mine who was taking Shakespeare with me explained.  The black ooze deconstructs whatever living being it comes in contact with down to the minutest of particles.  Once the organism is destroyed is it remade and can assume a wide variety of shapes and types.  The chemical essentially engineers new life.  This becomes part of the actual conflict within the plot as the humans are about to encounter the remaining Engineer on the planet:

David: A superior species, no doubt. The hypersleep chambers will impress, I trust.

Elizabeth Shaw: So they were traveling somewhere?

David: I’ve managed to work out the broad strips, it’s fairly evident they were in the process of leaving, before things went to pot.

Elizabeth Shaw: Leaving to go where?

David: Earth.

Elizabeth Shaw: Why?

David: Sometimes to create, one must first destroy.

At this point the reader will object, wondering what relevance any of this would have to a casual viewer.  The film, by the looks and sounds of it, is just as an avant-garde sci-fi flick that went over everybody’s heads.  Why should anybody care about a movie that explores the ideas of “humanity” in an unwatchable film?

The problem with this attitude is that it is ill founded, though I’m partly responsible for this impression.  I’ve made it thus far seem that you have to have three PhDs in Philosophy and Biology just to appreciate the film, but this isn’t the case.  The film explores the ideas about the origin of life, and while ship Prometheus does float through the stars, the heart and soul of the film is leveled firmly on the ground.  Prometheus follows two researchers who have amassed a body of data of various civilizations varying from Sumerian, Mayan, Egyptian, all of which show a large humanoid pointing towards a cluster of stars.  Charlie Holloway and Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) give their presentation and the reaction should demonstrate that the film is not avant-garde science fiction:

Charlie Holloway: These are images of archaeological digs from all over the earth.

[pointing to different images]

Charlie Holloway: That’s Egyptian, Mayan, Sumerian, Babylonian. That’s Hawaiian at the end there and Mesopotamian. Now this one here is our most recent discovery, it’s a thirty five thousand year old cave painting from the Isle of Skye in Scotland. These are ancient civilizations, they were separated by centuries, they shared no contact with one another, and yet…

[he gathers the hologram images to line up and he goes through each one]

Charlie Holloway: The same pictogram, showing men worshipping giant beings pointing to the stars was discovered at every last one of them. The only galactic system that matched, was so far from Earth, that there’s no way that these primitive ancient civilizations could have possibly known about it. But it just so happens, that system has a sun, a lot like ours. And based on our long range scans, there seemed to be a planet. Just one planet with the moon, capable of sustaining life, and we arrived there this morning.

Fifield: So you’re saying we’re here because of a map you two kids found in a cave, is that right?

Elizabeth Shaw: No.

Charlie Holloway: Yeah. Um…

Elizabeth Shaw: No. Not a map. An invitation.

Fifield: From whom?

Elizabeth Shaw: We call them Engineers.

Fifield: Engineers? Do you mind, um, telling us what they engineered?

Elizabeth Shaw: They engineered us.

Fifield: Bullshit.

Much like Alien before it, Prometheus relies on and explores the idea of class.  If it isn’t the geologist Fifield saying plainly he’s only there for money, it’s Vickers casually dropping in conversation that Weyland Corp. spent a trillion dollars on the expedition.  On board the ship along with the various scientists are the pilot Janek played by the, I think my wife’s expression is, hunksickle Idris Elba, and two support pilots who regularly discuss a bet and their shares.  Contrasting to these two is Meredith Vickers played by Charlize Theron, and the dynamic of this difference of class is not particularly subtle.  The pilots wear jeans and t-shirts, Vickers wears a skin-tight space suit through most of the film.  Vickers is constantly concerned about the mission at the end of the film it’s revealed that Peter Weyland, the near ancient CEO of a massive Terraforming corporation, has not only funded the expedition but has stown away in order to meet the Engineers and hopefully learn from them a way to avoid dying.  Weyland is a man who has built a business empire, and while it may border on cliché, all men in their own way build empires in order to overcome death.  The thought process is largely, I have achieved so much, it would absurd that my life is simply done, and because they possess wealth, and privilege, and power, death becomes a physical being that must be overcome.

During the exchange between Meredith and her father there’s a line that, apart from making its way into the trailer that so originally befuddled me, provides a great opportunity for a final summation of the film:

Meredith Vickers: If you’re really going down there, you’re going to die.

Peter Weyland: Very negative way of looking at things. Exactly why you should have stayed at home.

Meredith Vickers: Did you really think I was gonna sit in a boardroom for years arguing over who was in charge while you go look for some miracle on some godforsaken rock in the middle of space? A king has his reign, and then he dies. It’s inevitable. That is natural order of things.

I honestly wasn’t sure what was the best lesson to take from Prometheus since, whenever I watch the film, I’ve usually overcome with awe that a film could balance so many high concepts without becoming full of itself and actually remain entertaining.  Being the case I consulted my friend Michael Siegler who is an Alien fan, bordering on psychosis perhaps but that just makes him more fun, and I asked him what he felt a casual viewer should be left with.  His answer, was actually his fiancé Victoria’s answer.  I could rewrite it, but honestly quoting it verbatim is the best way to keep such a great idea intact:

Just because you want something doesn’t make you entitled to it. Almost every character in the movie feels entitled to something that they’re not, and it’s those feelings that unilaterally lead them to their dooms.

Every character in the film Prometheus is after something, and more importantly they are driven by the idea that because they want it that they’re owed it.  Elizabeth Shaw is after answers to the origin of life, Charlie Holloway is after the same thing however his motivations are more ego driven, David wants his “father” Weyland to be dead, Weyland himself wants to live forever and avoid dying, Fifield wants to make money for doing little work, Vickers wants her father to die so she can take over the company, and the worms in the Giant Head room just want to eat the biologist who’s name I honestly can’t remember.  Each character, apart from the worm, pursues this motivation doggedly often without regard or concern for the other people around and them and each of them, apart from Shaw, are ultimately undone by their own ego and this seems a fitting reason why a film like Prometheus deserves the attention that it does.

Once the viewer is able to get past the ontology, Prometheus offers a lesson keeping vein to many great science fiction works.  Science fiction often explores the concepts of new worlds, but more importantly it explores how often men’s egos and selfish ambitions serve as their undoing as they enter said new worlds and realities.  Human beings tend to be narcissistic and selfish creatures, and rather than marvel at the new discoveries and life, they are driven first by personal ambition, and one by one the characters in Prometheus are destroyed until all that’s left is Elizabeth Shaw, who narrowly escapes being face-raped by the tentacle monster she gave birth to, or killed by the pissed off Engineer (who himself gets face-raped and gives “birth” to the first xenomorph), and David’s talking head in a bag.  Prometheus is a film reminding the viewer that, while pursuing questions about the origin of life are noble and worthwhile, the answers will have implications and consequences.

Elizabeth Shaw wanted to know her creator, and when she finally does she has only one question:

Elizabeth Shaw: [to the Engineer] Why do you hate us?

What’s important is not the answer to this question, but instead why it is asked.  Why do human beings desire so much to know their maker, and discover if there is a meaning to their existence?  Prometheus doesn’t offer any clear answer to this question, but it does at least offer up the hope that human beings can overcome the selfishness inherit in the question.

Or perhaps I’m wrong.

Elizabeth Shaw, at the end of the film, feels like she deserves an answer as to why the Engineers wanted to destroy humanity because her life has been completely destroyed by the events which transpire in the film.  Rather than recognize that her needs, her concerns, her life in general is not inherently meaningful or important, she’s still driven by the idea she is entitled to an explanation.

In the end my sister may be justified in liking David, for by the end of Prometheus he’s the only person in the film who recognizes that wanting something selfishly doesn’t necessarily mean you deserve it.  Then again though he’s a robot in a Ridley Scott film, so trusting him will probably end in disaster.

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

I need to thank my friend Michael Siegler and his fiancé Victoria for helping me with this essay.  Victoria provided me with a thesis to work with, and my friend Michael, who lives Alien and has two book shelves dedicated to everything Alien, offered me a few links to help me give this essay some context.  The first is the actual screenplay for the film, the second is an interview with Ridley Scott in which he “explains” the movie, the third is an interesting examination of the film, exploring the spirituality and mythical elements found therein, and finally the fourth link is the cRacked article that explains how the Alien Franchise is built around the concept and imagery of rape.  Hope you enjoy:

http://www.joblo.com/scripts/Alien-Engineers-ORIGINAL-PROMETHEUS-SCRIPT.pdf

http://www.fandango.com/movie-news/interview-sir-ridley-scott-explains-prometheus-explores-our-past-and-teases-future-alien-stories-716238

http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html

http://www.cracked.com/article_18932_alien-film-franchise-based-entirely-rape.html

 

 

**Writer’s Note**

David in the Orrery is a scene that, when I first watched it I admit freely it had me in tears.  I’ve included a link to it below because there are few moments in movies that genuinely leave me awestruck.  Hope you enjoy.

The Martian and the Sublimity of Space: A White Tower Guest Article

Tags

2001: A Space Odyssey, Andy Weir, Film, film review, Gravity, human exploration, Matt Damon, Philosophy, Ridley Scott, science fiction, Seth Wilson, space travel, Star Trek, STAR WARS, Sublime, The Martian

It often feels like I’m selling religion door to door whenever I offer people the chance to write articles for my blog, for often eyes glaze over, compassionate nods appear, and the sentiment of “I’d really like to but, time you know…hey is that Superman outside the window?”  This of course leads me to turn my head in hopes of seeing some “Super-pecs” and when I discovered Superman is not actually there my friends have mysteriously vanished.  Still despite this lack of interest, I have found some takers interested in at least self-promotion, however the following article does not fall into this category.  Mr. Seth Wilson, an Oxford scholar and fellow graduate student, found the time to write a small review of the Ridley Scott film The Martian based on the novel by Andy Weir.

I do hope you enjoy.

The Martian and the Sublimity of Space

I read Andy Weir’s self-published debut masterpiece The Martian last year, and found it mentally engaging and emotionally compelling. And yet, I felt the book was greater than the sum of its parts in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Now that I’ve seen Ridley Scott’s film adaptation, a masterful work in its own right that stays mostly faithful to Weir’s novel, I have had an opportunity to examine what makes this story so special.  In a word, it’s sublime.

So what the hell does that mean? Most of us have heard the word, and some of us (myself included) have bandied it about without knowing exactly what it means. That’s not entirely our fault. Part of the problem lies in the word’s transcendent quality. Like the feeling it describes, the sublime is bigger than us, something just outside our reach—and yet, it’s also a part of us, in fact that best and highest part of our minds and spirits. Of the ten definitions for the adjectival form listed in the Oxford English Dictionary (and that should tell you something right there), number nine hits nearest the mark for my purposes: “Of a feature of nature or art: that fills the mind with a sense of overwhelming grandeur or irresistible power; that inspires awe, great reverence, or other high emotion, by reason of its beauty, vastness, or grandeur.”

The theory of the sublime was first outlined in a first-century text of rhetoric and aesthetic philosophy by a writer we call Longinus (the textual history of the work is complicated and need not concern us here). The author of the treatise outlined several qualities common to the sublime in art and literature. Among them is, surprise surprise!, a paradox. For while the sublime has the power to elevate the mind as seen above, it simultaneously has the power to overwhelm and even terrify us. This is what distinguishes the sublime from what we, and eighteenth-century philosophers grappling with issues of aesthetics, would call the beautiful. The beautiful is the sublime defanged.

Okay, okay, back to The Martian. The book, and film, are so powerful because they embody this paradoxical quality of the sublime. On the one hand, the story is a testament to the very heights (the Greek word Longinus uses for sublime is hypsos, meaning quite literally “height”) of human intellectual achievement. On the other hand, it thrusts us into the beautiful terrors of space, sublime in its own right. This powerful effect is what Alfonso

Cuarón’s 2012 film Gravity promised its audience, but unfortunately an unwieldy plot and unrelenting melodrama robbed that movie of its power. But here there is nothing to detract from victory after victory snatched from the jaws of inevitable defeat.

The story is also replete with examples of the elevated nobility of human spirit, another hallmark of the sublime. Mark Watney’s unflagging humor in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles pushes the reader, or viewer, to question whether we could, in his shoes, find those same inner resources of resilience. And, without spoiling too much, the loyalty of Watney’s crew, who left him for dead on the red planet at the story’s start, is also tinged with sublimity.

You would think that the presence of the sublime in a movie about the vastness of space would be a no-brainer, but as the cautionary tale of Gravity reminds us, this isn’t necessarily the case. The problem, I think, is that the sublime in art can often be, over time, a victim of its own success. Early films and shows about space—Star Trek, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Star Wars—were rife with instances of the sublime. The opening shot of Star Wars, in which the star-riddled blackness of space is blotted out by a hulking metallic star destroyer, is a prime example. Unfortunately, the success of these creative works spawned imitators who clad their works in the same outer trappings as these masterpieces without considering the underlying narrative and aesthetic elements that made them so successful. Take faster-than-light travel as an example. The spectacle of watching the Starship Enterprise engage its Warp Drive or witnessing the Millenium Falcon make the jump to hyperspace must have been an awesome and awe-inspiring experience to audiences witnessing them for the first time. Now that every space opera and science fiction show employs faster-than-light travel, though, a jump across galaxies is now no more sublime than a trip round the corner to the local market.

So, whether intentionally or by sheer accident (to me it’s still up for debate whether the sublime can be crafted or manufactured intentionally), Andy Weir as author and Ridley Scott as translator-into-film have both managed to recapture what is sublime about space and our precarious place in it.

 

 

About the Author:

Seth Wilson is a Graduate Student at the University of Texas at Tyler pursuing an MA in English, after which he hopes to enter a doctoral program elsewhere. He already holds an M.St. in History from Oxford University, where he studied cultural transmission in Old Saxon gospel translations.After some unprofitable time in the business world, he has returned to academia with a focus on Romantic literature, which inspired his interest in history in the first place. His current research interests revolve around cultural reception of Romanticism, including the fantasy genre’s use of Romantic visions of the imagination, and Transatlantic Romanticism. He is legally blind and lives with his retired guide dog.