Teal is blue

 

"Paranoid Protestants" is a three-hour long video about the Seventh Day Adventists (SDA) from a skeptical (probably atheist) perspective. It´s interesting, to be sure, and it´s obvious that the narrator (who sometimes doubles as himself!) has done some heavy reading on the history and theology of this particular denomination. I actually learned some new stuff about both Adventists and others from this documentary.

However, there are also some rather obvious problems with this production. For instance, the Branch Davidians headed by David Koresh are prominently featured. But what on earth is the *real* connection between the cult at Waco and the SDA Church? Not that much, really. It´s like making a docu about atheism and throw in Jim Jones and the People´s Temple (who were "Marxists" and sometimes sounded like atheists). 

The content-creator also believes that apocalyptic Protestantism (including the SDA) is the main cause of so many Americans believing in conspiracy theories. But a more likely explanation is that both apocalypticism and conspiracism have a common cause independent of both, or that they are parallell phenomena influencing each other. 

With that, have at it!

The long night has come

I never even heard of this scy fy TV series before. "Gene Roddenberry´s Andromeda" (or just "Andromeda") was originally aired over 20 years ago. Somebody (unclear who) has started to upload the old episodes on YouTube. The link above goes to episode three, "To loose the fateful lightning", which I have been hate watching a couple of times now. More on that later in this review!

"Andromeda" is apparently based on some old ideas by the late "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry. It was produced by his widow, actress Majel Barrett. Judging by the four episodes uploaded so far, the series is similar to "Star Trek" but mostly lacks its weird charm. The good guys are called the Systems Commonwealth, somewhat imprudently dubbed "the greatest civilization in history". Following a civil war, the Commonwealth is destroyed and replaced by a dark age in which humans are constantly attacked by various evil alien races. The main character, Dylan Hunt, is a High Guard officer from the Commonwealth who miraculously survived for 300 years at the event horizon of a black hole. His starship Andromeda Ascendant and a *very* motley crew roam the galaxy, trying to restore the old civilization. 

In the third episode, Hunt and his associates encounter a group of teenagers and children onboard an otherwise abandoned Commonwealth space station. The youngsters have formed a quasi-religious cult, awaiting the appearence of a Messiah-like figure who can save them from the Magog and the Nietzscheans (two alien races at war with humanity). It turns out that the cult´s expectations are very concrete: the children need the High Guard access codes to battle ships armed with planet-killing doomsday weapons. As the sole survivor of the old Commonwealth, Hunt does indeed have the codes. 

What happens next is...interesting. The stranded children clearly expect Hunt (their long awaited savior) to be a militarist who will lead them in battle and utterly destroy the aliens. Instead, Hunt turns out to be an idealist and near-pacifist. One of his associates is a full-pacifist Magog who sounds like a stereotypical Buddhist (or is it Quaker). He´s darn ugly, too. Like the Jews in the New Testament, the children are disappointed when the Messiah preaches peace instead of armed resistance. Their mentality is clearly that of religious fundamentalists. 

However...

What annoys me with this episode is that the "cult" is clearly right. With a few exceptions, the Magog are evil. Like parasitic wasps, they reproduce by laying their eggs inside humans. Why *not* nuke their planets sky high? Already in the first episode, we learn that the Systems Commonwealth preferred to negotiate with this bizarre race rather than resist them, handing over the Nietzschean home world to the intruders. At the time, the Nietzscheans were key *allies* of the Commonwealth. This triggered the civil war which brought down "the greatest civilization". Sounds like civilizational suicide. Yet, at least in this episode, we are somehow supposed to draw the conclusion that the children are crazy fanatics, while Hunt is the adult in the room?!

Frankly, I never seen more idiotic pacifist propaganda.  

"Star Trek" is mostly liberal, but during the 00´s, there was actually a series in the franchise that was more Neo-Conservative: "Star Trek: Enterprise". I wonder if "Andromeda" acted as the liberal counter-weight to that show? I suppose those of us who didn´t see the series when it was first aired will find it in 106 episodes. Assuming the YouTube channel Andromeda Official really has the rights to show them!

Night vision

 

SPOILER WARNING

"Beck - Spår i mörker" (also known as "Beck 2 - Spår i mörker") is a 1997 Swedish film (or strictly speaking a Scandinavian-German co-production). Police officer Martin Beck is a fictional character developed by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, but the film isn´t based on their crime novels. "Beck - Spår i mörker" features Peter Haber, Mikael Persbrandt and other famous Swedish actors. 

And now, the subjective part...

Almost 30 years later, the film comes across as very strange. It has a noir and cyberpunk feeling, but also concentrates heavily on Beck´s strained private relationships (which are much more mundane). One running gag is that Beck always has to break off his planned vacation?! Beck´s constant sidekick Gunvald Larsson comes across as "the crazy cop", while almost everyone else is incompetent. The plot itself was *extremely* unrealistic back in 1997, almost to the point of science fiction. Sweden was a much safer place 30 years ago. Today? You tell me.

Beck, Gunvald and Beck´s love interest Lena Klingström investigate a string of bizarre murders in the Stockholm metro. The assassins have hacked the security system and can turn off the lights and the power at will. Indeed, they seem to live in the tunnels. Curiously, no motive for the killings is discernable and the only clue is a Internet symbol meaning "death"...

It turns out that the murders are part of a computer game called "Final Doom", in which the players have to kill real people in order to "reach the next level". It´s never explained what this could possibly mean, but it´s heavily implied that the teenagers playing the game are actually a nihilistic cult. "Beck - Spår i mörker" ends with an American reporter revealing that a similar string of killings have been reported from New York. The cult is worldwide and presumably web-based. 

I suppose this noir film did tap into real fears about the Internet which existed back in 1997, long before most people even had access to the damn thing. Today, we know what happened. Violent cults (such as the notorious 764) do indeed thrive on the dark web. Also, youth gangs in Sweden recruit children on-line to carry out murders. It´s hard to believe that things will take a sudden turn for the better. In that sense, the high strangeness of "Beck - Spår i mörker" feels almost prophetic. 

Thankfully, the metro in Stockholm is still relatively safe!     

Heteroprax reflections

 

A dark-skinned Buddha preaching
to snake-spirits and tree-spirits!

A little gem from 2024.

Austro-Asiatic Buddha

The Order of Caesar

 

Credit: Walt Disney Studios

"Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" is the latest film (2024) about a post-apocalyptic world in which apes have become the dominant life forms, spouting human-like speech and intelligence. Meanwhile, humans have regressed to a beast-like existence. Or have they? Unknown to the apes, some intelligent humans have managed to survive in underground bunkers and are plotting a comeback as a species, which would threaten the dominant status of chimps, gorillas and orangs. 

The main character, the smart chimpanzee Noa, is taken prisoner (alongside his entire clan) by the gorilla dictator Proximus and is faced with a tough moral dilemma. Either co-operate with the still-intelligent humans to save his clan, while risking a new war between apes and unforgiving Homo sapiens in the future. Or support Proximus, whose projected authoritarian kingdom could save apekind by capturing human high tech weapons, but at the expense of everybody´s freedom. Noa choses the first option, presumably setting the stage for a sequel.

There are obvious references to the original "Planet of the Apes" movie (1968) throughout this production, and I believe some scenes were actually taped at the same location. A funny difference is that the orangutans are the good guys. Noa meets the orang Raka, who belongs to the "Order of Caesar" working to restore peace between Pongidae and Homo. Caesar was the effective founder of the ape civilization, but generations after his death, few remember his message of tolerance or his laws. Raka can read and write, and comes across as a kind of monk-intellectual, trying to salvage as much knowledge as possible during the Dark Age. The catch is that the orang doesn´t know that some humans can still speak and have no intention of co-existing with their former circus animals. Thus, Raka is the archetypical "naive intellectual".

Even worse is Trevathan, a dissaffected and weak human who collaborates with Proximus against his own kind. Trevathan also looks like a parody of an intellectual, presumably a fatalistic and demoralized hippie resigned to the fact that his utopian dreams have been dashed. The man spends his time entertaining the gorilla-king with stories about the ancient glories of Rome, until his grizzly end. 

While somewhat interesting (*are* there LOTR-like elements in the plot? What about "MonsterVerse"?), "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" strikes me as an extended "Planet of the Apes" fan fic story. I´m not sure if the average viewer remembers all the details from the 1968 film! Still, a sequel might be worth doing. Is there some reason why the main character has a name resembling the Biblical character Noah, for instance? Do the still-talking humans have a doomsday weapon? Et cetera. 

With that, I close this review!  

  

Under the hill

 

For whatever reason, I feel like linking to this old blog post. 

Ecumenical mysticism

The Golden Child

 

"The Creator" is a 2023 science fiction movie. It comes across as a peculiar hybrid between "Blade Runner", "Star Wars" and the US war in Vietnam. The first portion of the film is interesting. In the second half, the Vietnam War analogies and Buddhist savior-complex becomes downright cringey. 

The story begins with a technological breakthrough: humanoid robots with Artificial Intelligence. Something goes wrong and the robots detonate a nuclear bomb that wipes out Los Angeles. The United States promptly stops all AI development, but a competing nation known as New Asia refuses. The American military builds a space station called NOMAD to wipe out the Asiatic robots (and all human Asians who stand in the way). This may be an allegory for the fact that China is supposedly a world leader in AI technology. But as already noted, the similarity with the US intervention in Vietnam 1965-73 are also obvious. New Asia is clearly located in Indochina. 

The main characters have religiously inspired names: Joshua (compare Joshua or Jesus in the Bible), Maya (compare Buddha´s mother) and the robot "Alpha and Omega" (compare God or Jesus). A mysterious character is named Nirmata, apparently the Nepalese word for creator - according to ChatGPT, the term has no metaphysical connotations, but in the context of this film, it presumably does. New Asia turns out to be a strange place in which humans and robots live in peaceful harmony with each other, both apparently being Buddhists (or something like it). It´s clear that the robots are a stand-in for the Other, the excluded, the marginalized, and their armed rebel movements. The good guys are almost all colored, while the bad guys seem to be exclusively White (including a White female). Naturally, it turns out that the nuclear blast which destroyed LA might not have been the work of the AI, after all. 

"Alpha and Omega" (nicknamed Alphie) is a child, but also a Messiah-like savior with paranormal powers. She can control all technology and hence might wipe out NOMAD, which explains why the Americans want to kill/de-activate her. Note again that Alphie´s "mother" or creator is named Maya, suggesting that the child might be the Buddha. Note also that Alphie is artifically engineered by Maya, perhaps a reference to a virgin birth. It further struck me that there could be a weird parallel to the Biblical story of Joshua and the harlot Rahab, since the character Joshua in the film is tasked with infiltrating New Asia before NOMAD (= the nomadic Israelites?) wipes them out (like Jericho?). Note that he meets "Rahab"/Maya in an apparent strip club!

OK, so I´m a nerd...

Despite all the above, "The Creator" nevertheless feels like a self-parodic low budget production. Perhaps because the left-liberal message is too obvious. These days, films apparently *must* be like explicit pamphlets, otherwise the Woke autists don´t get it. Or something. Well, at least the religious allegories were *somewhat* hidden. One intriguing feature of "The Creator" is that the White Evil Empire isn´t really evil. The atomic explosion in California seems to have been an accident, rather than the result of a conspiracy. Thus, the US are misguided rather than actively malevolent. The worldview of the film turns out to be a form of milktoast liberalism in which everyone might at least potentially get along, rather than the hardline Marxism you expect from a "pro-Viet Cong" allegory. It´s all so "unproblematic".

OK, so I didn´t like this production. Or did I simply misunderstand its intended demographic? *Is* it a film for very young middle schoolers? Or for 24-year olds who think like 14-year olds?     

Not sure how many stars to give "The Creator". Perhaps two-and-a-half out of five. 

Metaphors decoded

 

Welcome to the Shimmer, earthling!

So I watched "Annihilation" from 2018. Or most of it. A Swedish TV/movie site claimed that it´s the most scary horror story ever made, et cetera. Naaah. Not by a long shot. In fact, I´m almost tempted to call it false marketing.

A mysterious alien presence takes over a territory in the United States. Patrols sent out to scout the area disappear after first going mad. Four women volunteer for a new mission to this scariest location on planet Earth. So what do four women, one of them a former US army soldier, talk about on an extremely dangerous expedition to the potentially deadliest place this side of the Andromeda Galaxy?

Why, their family relationships and former boyfriends, of course! 

Something tells me "Annihilation" couldn´t pass the Bechdel-Wallace test...

The women are weak, too weak for a realistic mission of this kind. In film like this, the actors should be manly macho men. Or female Israeli commando soldiers (hint hint). Maybe I´m missing some clever psychological metaphor. And oh, the mutant bear looked like the next cousin of the monster from "Prophecy" (a half-forgotten film from 1979).

But sure, there are some interesting angles here and there. The alien presence is called the Shimmer. It´s not clear what it wants, or even want something at all. The Shimmer has turned a wildlife refuge in Florida into a surrealist landscape that looks like a Salvador Dali painting. It´s actually quite beautiful, but also dangerous. People who enter the Shimmer get disoriented, suffer memory loss, or die under strange circumstances. The Shimmer expands (albeit slowly) and could potentially annihilate all life on the planet. During the dramatic finale, we realize that the alien quasi-intelligence can "download" our genetic signatures and memories, creating crude body doubles of real people. 

And maybe *that´s* the key metaphor of "Annihilation". The Shimmer is really a symbol of the Internet, AI and robots. It´s superficially beautiful (like AI-generated art), yet illusory and mechanical. Everything feels "wrong". The alligators are white while the plants form impossible hybrids. Some even look humanoid. The Shimmer turns us into robotic copies of ourselves, incapable of real relationships. And just like the Internet, the alien entity is quasi-intelligent but lacks a real purpose. It spreads like a computer virus in automatic fashion. Indeed, that´s how the main character Lena eventually manages to destroy the Shimmer: by making it mimicking an explosion, something the mindless system does until it self-destructs.

Or maybe not...

Three stars for this production. But no more.

Dan Brown´s Inferno

 

Credit: Exotic Indian Art (?)

The first time I watched "Inferno", I didn´t like it. At all. The whole thing felt extremely unrealistic (even for a Dan Brown story). Or like an extended European-Turkish travel guide for American tourists with fake cultural sensibilities. I considered it the worst of the three Dan Brown-related films. I don´t remember the exact year I saw the movie, but I do have a guess.

It must have been before the COVID pandemic...

Today? Well, when I re-watched "Inferno" earlier tonight, it struck me as a documentary. At least more or less! Above all, the film feels post-COVID rather than 2016 (the actual release date). 

The plot revolves around a group of eco-terrorists who have developed a pathogen which can kill half of Earth´s population. Naturally, the activists assume they are working for the greater good of the species or something to that effect. Their leader is a billionaire, a certain Zobrist, with all kinds of odd ideas. The WHO are the good guys (!) but it´s interesting that they are depicted almost as an intelligence agency. Think CIA or FBI. Other actors are looking for the bio-weapon, too. In one plot twist, a global security firm working on behalf of the genocidal Zobrist realize they´ve been conned and switch sides at the last possible moment.

It´s interesting to note that the terrorists are depicted as young, idealist and extremely well-educated. They are fanatics, but not obviously brain-washed. Zobrist is excentric but also rich and good-looking. It´s difficult not to think of, say, Elon Musk or Peter Thiel. But while Musk and Thiel are very much part of the establishment (and rather ugly), Zobrist doesn´t work for some secret Illuminati cabal. He seems to be a genuinely independent rebel. Come to think of it, all films based on Dan Brown´s novels are pro-establishment. (If this also true of the novels, I don´t know.) "The Da Vinci Code" defends sinister secret societies, "Angels and Demons" is implicitly pro-Vatican, while "Inferno" is about brave globalist agents trying to stop some kind of confused Woke utopians. 

If they had wanted to make "Inferno" even more realistic, the terrorists would have (perhaps unwittingly) worked for some next-level government black-op, while Zobrist would have been a powerful capitalist tycoon with insane takes seen as quite respectable among his peers...

But surely I´m just being paranoid, right? Right.   

The x is silent

 

So I just watched "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire", the latest film in the so-called MonsterVerse franchise. How do you make a sequel to a series of overwrought monster flicks? Why, you throw in even more overwrought monsters with extremely convoluted intra-monstrum relations...and off we go! Apparently, a lot of cringe and some silly Hollywood jokes are also part of the concept. Cringe as in "teenage angst", "mum-with-a-teenager angst" and "the myth of the noble savage". But OK, the Black conspiracy theorist is still kind of cute. The former love interest of the mum-with-a-teenager, not so much.

The x in the title is supposed to be silent, and is a wink to the Japanese entertainment industry where the cross sign in a movie title means "crossover". Seriously, does anyone even care at this point that a titanic production featuring both Godzilla and King Kong is technically speaking a crossover? Didn´t think so either. 

Besides, the real "crossover" (or rather near-plagiarism) is with "The Planet of the Apes". I can´t have been the only one who noticed certain relevant similarities. Since Kong has become the good guy, another primate has to be the bad one: Skar King, who is apparently based on gibbons and orangs. Our man Kong has to work overtime to show his competitor that hylobatids are the *lesser* apes!

Oh, and the special effects department had a lot of fun with this one, especially the scene where Kong and Godzilla have a little misunderstanding, destroying the pyramids of Giza in the process (although I think the Sphinx barely made it). Then it´s off to Copacabana for some new creative destruction! Humanity as a whole muddled through, however. So how do you make a sequel to *this* installment of the Titan saga? Well, the next MonsterVerse movie will be called "Godzilla x Kong: Supernova". I think we all get the drift... 

Still, fun to watch. After a fashion.        

Mormons and Cylons

 

Some clips from the original (1978-79) "Battlestar Galactica" series. The Mormon influences are obvious in these three excerpts. Most clearly in the first one. But note that the evil guy is called Iblis, the Muslim name for Satan!   

Heretics of Dune

 

I never read Frank Herbert´s "Dune" novels and probably never will. But of course I´m going to opinionate about them and the films anyway. How about that? My blog, my rules.

The story has an anti-imperial(ist) slant. The "spice" is obviously a metaphor for oil. But note that the evil space empire is based on Czarist Russia rather than the United States or the British Empire. And "Dune" was published during the Cold War. 

The Fremen are the wretched of the earth, the dark and oppressed masses. Their religion is obviously based on Islam. Paul Atreides is the upper class scion who breaks with his class and becomes a revolutionary leader. Note that both Bakunin and Kropotkin had an aristocratic background. However, Paul´s revolution against the Empire ends with him becoming the new emperor, while his fanaticized followers kills millions across the galaxy in a holy war or jihad. The parallels with the Russian revolution and its subsequent degeneration are obvious. Or with many other revolutions: the French, the Abbasid, and so on. 

In other words: the political perspective is "pessimist" and "reactionary". 

It´s also interesting to note that both the imperials and the revolutionaries are manipulated backstage by a strange matriarchal cult, the Bene Gesserit. The idea that popular revolutions are really the work of powerful secret societies is not new, of course. It´s a staple of far right conspiracy theory. And while "Bene Gesserit" is supposedly Latin, let´s be honest: everyone thinks it sounds Jewish. Indeed, their goal is to breed an Overman, the famed Kwisatz Haderach (this name is absolutely inspired by Kabbalist Judaism). Note also the sexism: the powerful female witches want to create a Supreme Male!

However, even in this pessimistic story universe, there does seem to be one path to societal change: enlightened despotism. If only the autocrat can acquire quasi-divine powers, the Empire can become an instrument for saving humanity from itself. In the first two novels, Paul can divine the future and therefore knows that the path he has chosen (which leads to the killing of 60 billion people) is nevertheless the lesser evil. In later novels, a descendant of Paul, Leto, becomes a human-sandworm hybrid (the sandworms are a kind of monsters worshipped as divine by the Fremen "Muslims") and after tyrannically ruling the Galaxy for thousands of years makes Humanity fit for freedom. Or something. Or something else. Yeah, well, so about that...

Note also that the Illuminati, pardon, Bene Gesserit have a similar perspective: the Kwisatz Haderach will "shorten the way" to the ultimate goal (note the similarity with the Mule in Asimov´s Foundation trilogy). But apparently this is too fast. Real change we can believe in takes hundreds of generations. Note also the irony that Herbert´s perspective doesn´t really seem that different from the degenerated imperial post-revolutionaries or even the Bene Gesserit. It´s all about elite control and mystical elite transmogrification. A further irony: in Herbert´s story, all religion seem to be obviously phoney, and yet, the "solution" is strikingly "religious" as well. 

And yes, "Dune" is considered a classic of science fiction, was a best seller and always got rave reviews in the American media. Hmmm...

Maybe everyone just misunderstood what the story was all about. Right? 

    

The holy war has begun

 

Credit: JJ Harrison 

So I just watched "Dune: Part Two" from 2024. The film is well-made and interesting after a fashion, but it moved me much less than I had expected. Certain aspects flet dragging. Such as...Chani, Chani and Chani. Did I mention Chani? 

This female Fremen warrior constantly tries to sway the main protagonist, Paul Atreides, from fulfilling his dark destiny. And of course fails. The whole thing isn´t just boring. It´s also similar to the Padme-Anakin drama from "Star Wars". Maybe George Lucas got the idea from the "Dune" novels, who knows, but in Hollywood terms, Lucas has the primogeniture. Oh, and Atreides accepts his fate without too much questioning. The choice is grey-grey rather than black-or-white. Again, like Anakin´s choice in "Star Wars".

I never read Herbert´s novels, and probably never will, but I did notice that all other film or TV adaptations of this space opera are extremely colorful and flamboyant, to the point of cringe. Or is it camp? Denis Villeneuve´s style is markedly different. We´re obviously on a desert planet, and part of the film is actually in black-and-white (the gladiator fight). Not even the pseudo-Russian aristocrats look too fancy.

The reactions to "Dune: Part Two" from "Alt Right" trolls on-line were...interesting. Sure, they complained about Chani, but nobody seemed to notice that "Muad´Dib" (i.e. Paul Atreides) is really *the bad guy*. But perhaps the Alt Right really likes the idea of a Muslim jihad destroying the based Space Empire? As long as a *man* is in charge who refuses to listen to His Annoying Girlfriend. LOL. Besides, isn´t Paul (who looks rather whimpish for a Muslim Mahdi) really manipulated backstage by a cultish matriarchal sisterhood?

Funny have people can miss even the most obvious things. 

With that, I close this little review.   

 

 

The forgotten branch

 

The quest for the only true religion continues...

This is a long presentation (taped on location in Oman) about Ibadism, the "forgotten" third branch of Islam alongside Sunnism and Shiism. Ibadism is the dominant form of Islam in the Sultanate of Oman at the Arabian peninsula.  

The Ibadis were originally something as strange as the moderate faction of the Kharijites (the "anarchists" or "ultras" of the Muslim world). Their most important doctrine was that Muslims who commit major sins or even repeated minor sins aren´t really Muslims and should therefore be excluded from the umma. This even goes for the imams - unless he is sinless, the imam can´t be a legitimate ruler. This marked the Ibadis out from both the Sunnis and the Shias. The former believed that even sinful rulers should be obeyed for pragmatic reasons, while the latter denied that imams could sin at all. It seems the purist attitude was balanced with a more tolerant-pragmatic one in practice, which distinguished the Ibadis from the Azariqa, the militant Kharijites who believed that all "Muslim" sinners should be killed?!

Today, the tolerant and supposedly peaceful side of Ibadism is emphasized, with Oman having freedom of worship for various immigrant communities and also for the Sunni and the Shia. However, the video says relatively little about modern Omani history, perhaps because it isn´t particularly "tolerant". Oman is an absolute monarchy and it´s interesting to note that the Sultanate was often in political or even military conflict with the Imamate, despite both nominally being Ibadis. The British Empire and the black gold (you know, oil) lurks in the background...

Still, an interesting contribution.

  

Portal to the Underworld

 

The episodes of this bizarre series have titles like "Portal to the Underworld", "Reptoids of Lassen Park" and "Demonic Dominion" (the latter not linked here). And no, it´s not a documentary about current American politics, LOL. I actually watched this series perhaps ten years ago, when it was called "Mysteries at the National Parks". It seems to have been retitled "National Park Secrets and Legends" (at least sometimes). 

Weirdly, I don´t remember how *scary* this series actually is. Or have I just become more paranoid lately? (Any connection to US politics?) It could easily be turned into a "real" horror flick!

Even if taken at face value, many of the incidents could (perhaps) be given natural explanations. Maybe something in the forests make people hallucinate? We´re talking EM effects, volcanic vapor, that kind of stuff. Note also that some of the eye witnesses are self-proclaimed paranormal researchers. Others are Native elders or New Age seekers. Perhaps they are "primed" to have strange experiences? But sure, there is a much simpler hypothesis: ghosts, aliens and unruly spirits are real...

This aint no country for White men. Or any men for that matter.  

Man, myth or fairy?

 

The YouTube channel "Cabin in the Woods" interviews former police officer David Paulides, who apparently made an entire documentary on the stranger sides of the Bigfoot phenomenon, "American Sasquatch: Man, Myth or Monster?". I haven´t seen it and probably never will, since I´m too stingy to pay my way on the interwebs. But sure, it looks interesting.

The main take away is that most people researching Bigfoot has a "dualist" view of the creature. It´s either  a flesh-and-blood primate or it´s entirely paranormal and therefore "spiritual" in nature. But what if the famed cryptid is both and neither? It´s a paranormal being which can enter our reality and leave physical evidence behind. Or perhaps it´s somehow part of our reality, which would then be far stranger than Modern Western Man imagines. 

This is of course not a new idea either, but connected to the notion that Sasquatch might be a kind of "hairy fairy". The fairies of folklore, after all, also act in this trickster-like manner. They look kind-of-human, all tangible evidence for their existence tends to disappear or be inconclusive, and can appear or vanish at will. Yet, they are materialized enough to abduct humans, mate with them (!) or attack their farm animals. I assume telepathy is also part of the picture.

What should be done about this is anybody´s guess. Nothing? The government denies knowledge as usual, according to Paulides because they´ll never acknowledge want they can´t completely control. Let alone understand. Which sounds about right. At least modern governments animated by the Western Idea of Progress act in this manner. Indeed, this is actually an interesting idea in itself: do conspiracy theorists feel strangely safe in the knowledge that at least *somebody* (the conspirators) are in control and know what´s shaking?

But if that´s simply not the case? "They" are even more scared about this stuff than you and me...   

Forever young

 

When I was much younger, there was a popular German pop band named Alphaville. They were apparently named after some strange dystopian movie. I watched the film earlier today - for the first time ever. ”Alphaville” turns out to be a French science fiction flick from 1965, directed by Jean-Luc Godard and starring Eddie Constantine, an American actor whose character Lemmy Caution seems strangely misplaced. And yes, he speaks French! The entire production is slightly surrealistic and the plot isn´t always clear.

The film taks us to Alphaville, a futuristic city which has traits of both the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and a Western techno-utopia. The streets are named after famous scientists, and the nominal leader is a certain Professor von Braun (or perhaps Vonbraun?). Guess who *he* is freely based on? All women seem to be prostitutes – think of how the KGB tried to snare Western visitors with honey traps. Alphaville is run by ALPHA-60, a super-intelligent computer which communicates with a peculiar guttural voice. Intentionally or otherwise, its monologues sound like typical French quasi-intellectual mumbo jumbo.

The similarities with George Orwell´s ”1984” are obvious, including a kind of Newspeak and the authoritarian idea of erasing both past and future, making everyone live in an Eternal Now. Naturally, feelings (including love) are banned. Since Caution uses ”Oceanic time” when making temporal references, the viewer is presumably supposed to spot the Orwellian influence. There is also a vampire theme, although not very pronounced. Vonbraun´s real name turns out to be Nosferatu!

Caution (posing as a reporter) is on a secret mission from the Outlands to retrieve a previous agent and kill Vonbraun. The exact location of the Outlands is never made clear. Is it another place on Earth? Or another galaxy entirely? Nor is it clear when the story is supposed to be set. At one point, it´s heavily implied that the Cold War is just a few decades in the past. Alphaville and the Outlands (including ”Tokyoville” and ”Nueva York”) are themselves embroiled in a cold war-style confrontation which threatens to turn hot at any moment.

The Alphavillians are remarkably inept and it´s difficult to believe that we´re really seeing a totalitarian dictatorship. There are a number of absurd situations, including a *very* bizarre execution scene. In fact, I don´t think I´ve ever seen an execution this strange in all of cinematic history! ALPHA-60 at first doesn´t consider Caution a threat and lets him freely roam the city. In another typical plot twist, Caution eventually destroys the computer by asking it a riddle it can´t answer (since the machine is strictly logical). And yes, underlying it all is an incredibly boring love story between the hard boiled Agent 003 and a certain Natacha von Braun (or is it Vonbraun?) who may or may not be the professor´s daughter.   

To a modern viewer, this 1965 production comes across as very dragging, but I admit that it was interesting (after a fashion) to see this relic of a time which feels both very far away and yet strangely familiar (even with the surrealist accoutrements). Pardon my French, by the way! The techno-utopia turned dystopia still looks very current, including the intelligent machine (think AI). Even the inept authoritarianism feels so 2025. Most of the other stuff comes across as very dated. I mean, they even use phone boots! Still, could be of some interest if European noir is your thing.

ChildX

 

Anmärkningsvärt att Amazon tänjer gränserna på detta sätt. Systemfel? 

Nu anmäler vi Amazon för barnpornografibrott

Ritvik not welcome here

 

"Glitch in Bhakti" is an anti-ISKCON documentary produced by some breakaway faction, which simply calls itself ISKCON Truth. They support the "ritvik system", but also criticize the official ritvik movement around the ex-ISKCON temple in Bangalore. Is it a breakaway of a breakaway? 

The docu is probably confusing for those entirely new to the subject, consisting of excerpts from American news reports, private films of ritviks heckling the official ISKCON (which sometimes leads to brawls) and a mysterious tape recording in which Prabhupada seems to suggest that he is being poisoned. Plus other material also excerpted from elsewhere. 

The message of "Glitch in Bhakti" is that ISKCON was a good organization under Prabhupada, but quickly degenerated after his death (or murder), when the 11 members of the new collective leadership turned themselves into "gurus" and hence usurped Prabhupada´s authority. The scandals surrounding New Vrindaban in West Virginia and the murder of Sulochan are mentioned. The docu also accuses the post-Prabhupada ISKCON of liberalism and decadence. Everything from an idol of Jesus to female fashion shows are frown upon, and so is the use of the English language when singing devotional hymns. New editions of Prabhupada´s books are another point of contention.

The "ritvik system" (or more properly the ritvik doctrine) is the idea that Prabhupada didn´t appoint a successor. The 11 members of the collective governing body therefore weren´t "gurus" and "acharyas" - these roles strictly belonging to Prabhupada himself - but rather "ritviks" or representatives, a lower position. Prabhupada remains the sole guru even posthumously. Maybe I missed something, but I don´t think it´s clear at all that this was Prabhupada´s intention. It certainly sounds as if he *did* appoint his successors to be gurus with the power to initiate their own disciples...

If you must know my position on this rather esoteric point (for an outsider). 

Make of this content whatever you wish.

I´m not Todd Hewitt

 

So I watched (on-off) "Chaos Walking" during the transition from Daylight Savings Time to normal time. 

Must be the most boring walk I´ve ever seen. The whole story feels pointless and I never got the right dystopian feeling. What´s so dystopian about living on a planet that looks like the Appalachians, LOL? Also, it´s annoying as hell, since many of the characters can hear each other´s thoughts (a phenomenon the movie calls the Noise). 

In the end, the hero and the heroine manage to find Utopia in the form of an incoming space ship filled with high tech and human colonists much nicer than the noisy hillbillies. Strangely enough, they never find each other. Whatever. 

"Chaos Walking" is apparently based on a series of science fiction novels for teenagers. I´ve never read them, but judging by Wiki´s summaries, they are probably better than the movie adaptation.

Hope this short review wasn´t too loud!