Good enough to eat, part two

In my previous post on Italian cannibal films, a favorite subject of mine I mentioned in passing how the films portrayed primitive practices. I didn't really take on that particular subject in any real way though. Despite the fact that the notion of something primitive is a powerful psychological factor and an important trope in these films. It's time to tackle the myth complex of the primitive in relation to horror films. (Warning: several spoilers below.)

As usual I don't mean myth in the way Mythbusters use the term. While I am in many ways a cultural relativist I'm much interested in the power and function of a myth than I am in cultural relativism. When I say myth I mean a tale with emotional truth by which we order our perceptions of reality. Primitive is such a myth.

In my first post on the subject I mentioned Edgar Rice Burroughs. When I was quite young my parents bought me a collection of nine Tarzan books. Several more had been written but if I am not mistaken these were the ones that had been translated to Norwegian. I loved these books, for many reasons. One of the reasons that has stayed with me is the idea of lost civilizations and advanced cultures surrounded by jungles and cannibalistic savages or similar. It's an idea equally important in Burroughs's Barsoom series, where the noble red martians are surrounded by primitive barbarian green Martians. The idea of the primitive is the central core of the Tarzan books. Tarzan, Lord Greystoke, himself is a white man reared by a tribe of apes (who stand in for the most primitive humans) and rises to be their king and the lord of the Jungle. His naked body and sharp steel knife are contrasts symbolic of his primitive surroundings and the noble astuteness of his mind and character. I'm not going to claim that Tarzan is great literature. It's inherently racist and formulaic but read with the right mindset it can be both entertaining and enlightening as a source to knowledge about the society that fostered the books. I could write a whole post about Tarzan, but I won't. At least not today.



These ideas of exotic locations filled with less sophisticated people are fundamental to cannibal films, as well as a whole array of other exploitation, sexploitation and horror films. A potent and lovely example is the french film Gwendoline with its S&M fueled fantasies of a lost realm of white amazonian women surrounded by savage cannibals - and a shit ton of nudity! This film displays not only the idea of the primitive as a scary and hostile other, but also what constitutes the idea of the primitive. They are tribalistic, they occasionally eat people and they like to ravage white women. This of course is the very pattern of both Tarzan and cannibal films. However there is an interesting duality to be found here, which is even more explicitly present in Cannibal Holocaust: civilization is just as wicked, just more ingenious and twisted in its wickedness.

In Cannibal Holocaust this very twisted wickedness is shown as western documentarians out to make a film about primitive people in the jungle. They find their primitiveness to be a disappointing in its lack of true savagery and go about provoking them in a cruel way. It's a beautiful inversion of the common conceptions found in so many other cannibal films. It's no longer enough to venture into the jungle and have blonde hair to be cruelly tortured, slain and eaten. (Without condiments, cleaning nor preparation. Even this vegetarian knows that they're begging for salmonella or something.) While it's not entirely the noble savage it certainly is a viable post colonial critique of our freudian fear of and fascination with primitives. And as post colonial critiques go I personally prefer mine with a touch of brutality and nudity.

When I say touch I mean "a lot".

Defining the primitive is not easy. I use the term vaguely, as it is a vague notion we have. Part psychology and part cultural trope. The primitive is usually, but not always, "the other" and a threat. In horror films we usually see the primitive either as a location where brutal savages live, and where the protagonists end up in a nearly Robinsonian manner - by accident or design. This is usually the case in the cannibal films. In La Montagna del dio cannibale and Cannibal Holocaust the victims go the land of the primitives knowingly, looking for glory and riches. In other films a plane crashes, an outpost is attacked or the protagonists simply didn't realize where they were heading and the dangers that were there.

Sometimes we encounter the primtive as an atavism in our own backward communities. The sausages in the gas station are actually composed of human flesh, and those inbred people might be great with a banjo, but they also like it when you squeal. The primitive is a source of fear whether it's presented as the xenophobic other, or the more jungian atavistic type. In many ways the primitive as trope or archetype or myth or whatever represents our fear of what lies beneath when modern industrial society is shaved away. This is particularly evident in the already alluded to Texas Chain Saw Massacre: the jobs disappeared and the family was left to fend for themselves in whatever way they could. Quite interestingly the mother of the family is as dead as the industry that kept them prosperous and the males turn savage. Women are usually either revered as maternal enforcers of order, or victims of sexual aggression (raped, being eaten, tied to stakes or tortured with phallic implements) in depictions of the primitive in horror, and when the maternal principle is missing the need to bludgeon women in the head with hammers, or such, arises.

A fascinating contrast to this type of depiction of the primitive can be found in what is possibly the best novel ever written: Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus. In the aforementioned Tarzan the protagonist is a noble surrounded by primitives, and ends up as their master due to his biological breeding and background. A lord he was born, a lord he must be. In Frankenstein a creature is created with no background and no breeding. He is a primitive in his lack of civilized traits, surrounded by cultured society. The tragedy and horror lies in the fact that he is noble and highly intelligent, but shunned by his creator and the modern world. In fact he is probably undone by it as he drifts off on an ice flake carrying his dead progenitor and the latter's funeral pyre.

Frankenstein and Tarzan were written in different eras embodying two very distinct concepts of the primitive. Burroughs wrote in a time very much in line with Kipling's White Man's Burden, and is obviously even inspired by his Jungle Book. The primitive is something that was to be tamed, and the noble white man was the one who could do it. Frankenstein however was written a century earlier and in a time where the noble savage had strong influence on the romantic ideals. The untouched, or unblemished, was superior to the sinful and complicated ways of the modern world. Even more so the book carries very strongly the idea that science can go too far in its ambitions and turn the world into a horrible place.

Personally I love both of these depictions, while neither agrees with me in terms of ideology. But that is a whole different continent, and we're not going there. Interestingly however it deserves mention that in most Frankenstein screen adaptations the tables are turned, and the hulking, primitive creation becomes a monster, whether by flawed design or by circumstance. An exception is Kenneth Branagh's honest attempt at a more loyal adaptation. While his film falls short in many respects it manages to capture the tragic promethean element of the novel, unlike its predecessors. Interestingly it also turns up the sexuality of the book to 11, or even 12. God knows why. I still prefer the 1931 film any day, despite being less true to the book. In part because it doesn't have Kenny B groping at Helena Bonham Carter's crotch.

That makes me sound so prudish, and I feel a need to return to tittie flashing cannibal films for a final remark on the subject. Imagine yourself deep in the jungles of new guinnea, surrounded by crocodiles, snakes and barely clad, whig bearing, underpayed, drunk philipinos, errr, I mean local cannibals. There is only one way to escape their anthropophagous wrath. You must become as primal as they are. Partake in their rituals and dine on your friends with them. In both Cannibal Holocaust and Il Paese del sesso selvaggio we see that this is the only possible option. The latter is of course a nudity infused remake of A man called horse, and follows the same pattern: go through terrible and visceral rituals, cast off civilization and you will live.

This in turn takes us to modern primitivism, but that is something I would have to tackle in the future. Or maybe not. We'll see.

Muscles, fire, guns, the new frontier and inner city savages!

"We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene!"
Colonel Walter E. Kurtz - Apocalypse Now

I just read that despite previous rumors that Chuck Norris' involvement with Expendables 2 meant that the film was going to a PG 13 film, it is in fact R-rated - with swearing and all. Chuck Norris is of course famously a christian conservative right wing twat, and doesn't like cussing. Murder and war is fine, cussing is not.

I grew up mostly in the eighties, a decade most of you think of as the decadent days of shoulder pads, mullets, horrible synthesizer music and pink over sized knit sweaters. This is of course true, but the eighties were also the last decade of cold war anxiety and all the implications that came with that.

A significant feature of this decade was the fact that a former movie actor turned Republican politician held office from 1981 to 1989. Fittingly his values are embedded in quite a few of the mega movies of the decade, and certainly in the meme "action film". Chuck Norris' involvement with right wing politics is not unique, to say the least.

Let's take a look at the action films of the eighties, to which Expendables plays loving tribute. We're talking Sylvester Stallone, Charles Bronson, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Chuck Norris of course - and a million clones. In many ways however the meme was born some years earlier with Clint Eastwood and his brilliant interpretation of the role "Dirty" Harry Callahan in 1971 - a movie that spawned a handful of sequels and changed the face of action films forever.

Dirty Harry was set in the inner city in the dying throes of the hippie era, post Manson and towards the end of the Vietnam War. Social upheaval, the early clashes of the culture wars and drug culture had a severe impact on American culture, and the result of course was fear. Fear of course breeds fantasies of escaping fear, and Dirty Harry showed us that one of the most potent images was the head strong, authoritarian white cop who could look past politics and turmoil and create order with his .44 magnum revolver. The revolver is of course a unique symbol of the American frontier, and in Callahan's hands it transforms modern America into a new frontier where savages fear its powers. Dirty Harry postulates a potent urban myth wherein politicians are weak and corrupt and the law itself gets in the way of justice and order. (Incidentally: Dirty Harry's script was co-written by a certain John Milius. Hang on to that name for now, we'll return to him later.)

Several years later the film's myth would be invoked again in a whole bunch of films, but two of the most memorable are Death Wish (1974) and Cobra (1986) starring Charles Bronson and Sylvester Stallone respectively. The two films take different approaches to the myth however, and both are interesting:

Death Wish presents us with the common man turned spirit of vengeance, who takes the law into his own hands because the lawmen are too civilized to exert authority. He becomes judge, jury and executioner, to use a cliché, and turns his revolver on street punks and modern savages. Chaos and turmoil surrounds the common man, but with the right tools he can turn the frontier back into a home for good men.
Cobra's take is different. In Cobra the law is no longer just flaccid or corrupt, it is irrelevant. Gangs have taken over the inner city and are enforcing their own rule, with no respect for the laws or the police. They have zero qualms about open war with the police. Into this situation Marion Cobretti is injected as a self proclaimed cure. His revolver is replaced with a modern 9mm gun, and the frontier is gone. This is the normal state of our decadent civilization. Cobretti is seen as a necessary evil and the only way to take on the worst of the lawless elements. He succedes, but the viewer is warned not to follow his path - unlike the path of Paul Kersey in Death Wish. Kersey was a common man turned vigilante, Cobretti is "nietzschean" superhuman bred for war - a true child of the Vietnam War.

- The court is civilized, isn't it pig?
- But I'm not. This is where the law stops and I start - sucker!
Cobretti converses a criminal scum bag in Cobra

Stallone of course is probably best know for his portrayal of another child of the Vietnam War, and a film that spawned a whole genre of its own. I am of course talking about Rambo and the film First Blood from 1982. First Blood is also the first film that taps into the rich tapestry of the war that was lost because the civilized liberals back home didn't believe in the war goals - and even more potently that the troops were betrayed by the society for which they fought and sometimes died. (There is of course some truth to this, but I'm concerned with myth, so I'm not gonna debate that issue.) John Rambo is a veteran on his way home, out of work after the war ended and more or less a bum - despite being a highly decorated and well trained special forces combat soldier. Walking along the road he is arrested by the local sheriff, and after being subjected to ridicule and torturous treatment he flips. A small war ensues in which Rambo uses his experience from Vietnam to outwit the cops. After a climactic battle with the local constabulary he is arrested by his former C.O. Colonel Trautman. The gist of the story is that the civilized postwar society has no need of its combat damaged troops, and would easily turn its back on the people who fought in the war. First Blood is probably one of the best action films of the eighties, and deserves a much better reputation that it has. Where Apocalypse Now(John Milius again) was a film about the war and how it burns away humanity First Blood showed how society is unable and unwilling to face the consequences of sending people to war. First Blood isn't Taxi Driver, even though they share a few themes. Where Taxi Driver portrays the veteran as slightly soft in the head, Rambo is in possession of his faculties. Society in the other hand is cruel and has turned its back on its warriors.

First Blood spawned three sequels, out of which the first one (from 1985) is most memorable as it continued to tap into the mythic tapestry of the Vietnam War. This time complete with corrupt politicians and CIA operatives willing to sell out the vets in favor of appeasement. Where First Blood was ambiguous the sequel is a homage to the veterans and their sacrifice and the fiery crucible of war. Rambo is no longer a mentally damaged veteran, but a soldier in the name of justice and political irredentism. The Reagen era came of age with this film, and its muscular hero was suddenly a role model for others: Schwarzenegger's Commando (1985) and Raw Deal (1987), as well as the Missing in Action films with Chuck Norris were basically Rambo knock offs, with the same theme and the same type of action - and the same message: brutality is sometimes necessary to uphold justice and righteousness - and civilized society is unable to defend its citizens in the face of corruption and rising crime. In the words of so many others: we need a new man, a strong man, to lead us in these new times.

Apart from First Blood II the film that showcased this ideology more than anything is probably Predator (1987). A team of elite soldiers on a clandestine mission in South America is tricked by CIA, and encounters an invisible enemy which picks them off one by one. Only by casting off all the traits of the modern civilized world is Schwarzenegger's character able to defeat the technology enhanced monster. He takes a jungian dive into a lake of mud to cover his body heat, discards the modern weaponry and encounters the monster naked and armed with wood and fire. He prevails not because of his advanced weaponry and training, but in spite of it. A more obvious anti modernist tribute to raw masculine destructive force is hard to imagine. Predator is of course a brilliant film, and worth watching not just for its story but because two of its actors wound up as active politicians: Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger - serving as Governors of Minnesota for the right wing Reform Party of America and California for the Republicans respectively. Worth mentioning is of course that Clint Eastwood has served as mayor for the Republican party, and that Bruce Willis is also an ardent Republican, along with Chuck Norris. There's a lot to be said here, and not enough time. Follow the links instead.

As it is with Beetlejuice John Milius has a tendency to pop up when you mention his name a few times, and his contribution to eighties action is probably the most well formulated of all, while not as potent as Rambo or Predator in its mythic superstructure. Red Dawn (1984) is another Reagen era film full of anti communism, tributes to war and strength and paranoid anti-politician messages. It concerns a band of teenagers who fight back against a joint Cuban-Soviet invasion and consequent occupation of the American midwest. The film shows them as they progress from survivalism, through partisan sabotage and guerrilla warfare to heroes. It seamlessly blends frontier revivalism with anticommunist paranoia and criticism of politicians who didn't see the coming storm. I've said it before, but this film is fantastic - both in terms of realistic portrayal and overt political propaganda. (Where most communists in American films used Chinese copies of the iconic AK-47 this is one of the very few films where the Soviet troops actually use Soviet weapons. The level of detail in this film is amazing.) John Milius is of course a self declared fascist and "zenarchist" with a fascination for militarism, weapons and ancient roman values as well as bushido. Milius more than anyone sums up the traits of the great American action film: anti civilization, pro military, anti modernism, anti socialism, pro guns and pro might. If in doubt see his other films: Apocalypse Now, Farewell to the King, or Conan the Barbarian (not Conan the Hawaiian).

- What do you want.
- Freedom, to be like we are.
- Anything else?
- Guns. So they can't take the freedom away.
Characters in Farewell to the King sum up what Milius is all about.

Which of course leads me to the conclusion. In the post Vietnam War decades that led to the end of the Cold War American saw the rise of a unique form of pseudo-fascism. This pseudo-fascism was unique in the sense that it had almost no political significance but worked instead to form the myths of the once so liberal nation through films. A potent mix of vigilante justice, anti government sentiments, pro death penalty and anti civilization messages became common for these block busters, and the films that copied them. The question is of course: how much of current American culture can we say results from this myth complex?

I'll leave you with a trailer for Cobra. Probably the film that sums it all up better than any other film. Might makes right!

Pulling yourself into a new existence.

Thanks to a friend of mine, who dragged me into this with enthusiasm and conviction, and the wonderful people at Wings of Desire. I had a new experience yesterday, and I can't quite use my academic training to quantify it. This is nothing new, it happens to a lot of people, and I dare say more and more people consciously seek it out.

Have you ever taken a look at commercials from way back? I mean a real look and not just looked at the way women are portrayed as servants, but how so many of them were about selling modernity as well as a specific product. Sleek modernist design, machinery, science and urbanity were selling points in the year after the second world war. There was an air of progress, safety and techno optimism after the dark irrational forces of fascism had been vanquished. Take a look at the beatiful schematics of the washing machine here for instance. Nothing mystical about it. Nowhere, no how.

Compare this to how we sell shampoo today. It's all about emotions, and ethereal unquantifiable orgasmic experiences. Interesting huh?

Unless you're blind and stupid you've probably noticed a few social trends that fit in this very context: getting married is back, the catholic church is growing in protestant countries, along with new age, occultism, buddhism, hinduism and islam, and television shows are increasingly concerned with mystic experience, parapsychology and alternative religions - in a positive way.

Yesterday I was suspended by two hooks lodged in my back. I'm not a member of some Amazonian tribe where things like this is done to prove manhood, nor am I particularly masochistic - and yet I chose voluntarily to have my skin stretched and chance all my weight on two steel hooks and a small patch of skin.

Though I like to see myself as an individualist and not some follower of trends it would be naive not to notice a pattern here. Especially considering my other interests: ritualism, occultism, buddhism, symbology, mythology and so forth ad nauseam.

Traditionally something like this would have been a rite of passage, in the Arnold Van Gennep school of thought, and he makes some very interesting points. Rites de passages is highly readable today and perhaps one of the few books on ritualism that has really stood the test of time. His theory of course concerns moving from one type of existence into a new one - or crossing of thresholds.

This is not necessarily evident though, and I actually think modern ritualism (in this particular context) is both a result of and a continuation of a fragmentation of traditional ritualism. By result I mean antithesis: modernity has rationalized society to the point where people lack content for their lives. We are born, we live, we die, we rot and if there's anything in between that puzzles us we turn to psychiatrists with chemical explanations - and for some reason we don't feel fulfilled by this. Like there is something missing. For this reason many of us crave entry into a world of irrational thought. Perhaps even initiatory experiences (though I feel a need to point out that this initiatory experience and use of traditional ritualism should not be likened to the rather outdated "sect" called traditionalism).

Personally I am an academic, scientifically minded person who prefers Houdini's open minded debunking to Blavatsky's fraudulent bullshit when mysticism is involved, and still I find a great deal of meaning in this kind of ritualism.

And ritualism it certainly is. Structurally it even parallels the classical outline of Golden Dawn rituals. You start with a cleansing, followed by an invocation of inner strength, you perform the act, and end it with a new cleansing. (While many occultists are moving away from this somewhat rigid pattern I personally prefer it, and it works well.)

There's a reason why rituals are constructed this way - and you'll notice the very same structure even in a boring protestant church - by singing songs and playing the pipe organ. The first ritual sets the stage and clears it for the content of the main ceremony. This is done by creating a barrier between the profane and the profound. (In Jewish temples this is physically underlined by the famous veil, which separates the two spheres.) By doing this we signal that we are in a deeper and more spiritual mode, and receptive. After the main body of the ritual we need to return to the profane world, and we use more rituals to signal that we're no longer talking to the gods and our souls, and that we're once again primarily concerned with the material world. It would be anticlimactic and maybe even exhausting not to be allowed to come down after the spiritual journey you've been on.

So this is how we frame the ritual, but what do rituals contain? The answer is of course pure myth. These rituals, while being traditional types of rituals, they have been appropriated, recontextualized and cleansed of content - to the point where you can fill them with personal experience (which is why I say it's a continuation of the modernist experience). Where they were primarily initiatory experiences pre-modernity they have now become primarily personal experiences. Of course, the initiatory aspect is still present: by doing this you pass a threshold into a new understanding of yourself. You're building personal myth so to speak. It's an experience you'll always remember, and the growth you experience is something you carry with you. (Additionally there is of course the subcultural element and the obvious initiatory aspects of that, but I'll leave that alone. This is a fairly superficial blog after all...)

I feel personally enriched by the experience, in a very different way than from my earlier experiences in the field of body modification. I have a tattoo, it was great fun, doing it again. I have a scarification, even more fun, not doing it again though. I've pierced myself a jillion times, great fun, got bored, took them all out after walking around with a mask for 15 years. But this was a different camel altogether. It was the proverbial leap of faith actually.

I hoisted myself up, and the moment I let my feet off the ground was like stepping out of a reality and into a new one. The resolve I needed to muster came from somewhere very deep. While there was hardly any pain involved the mind just doesn't want to trust that this is in fact safe. Despite having seen other people do it. After that it was all about flying.

It's a completely irrational experience, and I loved it. Doing it again. Definitely doing it again. Thank you Anette. :)

Read more here:
wings of desire

Fire and the myth of the New Flesh!

One of the most central myths in human history, told by what is probably every single culture to ever have existed is the myth of fire. The most well known is of course the myth of Promethevs who stole the fire from the gods. You've all heard it.

There are several reasons why these myths are so powerful, depending on the myth itself of course, but also inherent in the common theme. Obtaining fire is about freedom to decide one's own fate, civilization, mastery of nature, predictability and about connection to the profound. Most significantly, fire was a step on the tool making evolutionary ladder which allowed humans to control a force of nature and thereby paved the way for technological innovations that came later. It's up there with the first knife, the wheel and the jar and other significant early achievements.

Mythically speaking the most significant trait of these stories would be man's ability to rise into the sphere otherwise occupied by the gods (the Sun most prominently of course). By mastering the art of fire man was no longer a slave to the gods, but master of his own destiny. Even, by mastering the gift from the gods we are able to construct a new religion and approach divinity in a new way. The innovation of fire supposedly coincided with the approach of sun worship and patriarchy, at least on some level.

The various fire myths around the world are complex, and despite following some common structure they also differ vastly. Claude Levi Straus goes into some of these in great detail, but I'm going to leave that be for now. My understanding of the symbolic meaning of many of the details, and my knowledge of mythical structures is nowhere near as impressive as his. One common theme for fire myths is that after initially obtaining fire the gift is lost, or stolen from man, and a hero must regain it for the good of his people, by going on a quest of some sort.

The movie La guerre du feu (English Title: The quest for fire) from 1981, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud concerns this exact portion of the fire myth, and it's one hell of a story, with briliant production values and direction! (Also, it's the first feature film appearance of Ron Perlman, whom some of you probably know better as Hellboy or from that horribly overrated film by Caro and Jeunet).

I first saw this film when I was about seven or so, and it made a lasting impression. The film starts out with a small tribe of stone age people who have fire, but don't know how to make it. The entire structure of the tribe is therefore geared towards caring for and guarding the kindle they carry with them, and guard with their lives. Consequently when this kindle is accidentally lost after a fierce battle with a competing tribe life takes a turn for the worse. (The competing tribe fills the role of what Lévi-Strauss called the Trickster, somewhat simplified.) It's decided that three of the tribe's members will go out and search for a new source of fire, while the rest of the tribe try to survive without it.

Wile I am certain things like this happened in real life it is evident that this is no historical drama, but a compression of cultural and technological evolution into a myth complex for retold in the language of "modernity". The stone age tribe coexists with tribes that are significantly more advanced technologically, juxtaposing the "primitive" tribe on the first step of the evolutionary ladder with the more civilized tribe - capable of creating fire, as well as other technological gizmos. Also, the cult venerated by the more advanced tribe is seemingly more complex than the fire-seeking tribe, though this is not a significant theme in the tale.

This film is of course a redux of the so called "cave man" genre, which was immensly popular back in the fifties and sixties, before nearly dying out. (The most long lived memory of that genre would probably be the Flintstones though.) Despite the name the cave man films were mostly about hot cave WOMEN, as you can witness in films like "The Wild Women of Wongo" (1958), or even better, you can drool over "the first bikini in pre-history" worn by Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C. (1966). The latter is a masterpiece in its own right, produced by Hammer Films and completely historically accurate. ;)

Structurally and thematically La guerre du feu has interesting similarities to the Welch film. Both films are of course laden with sexual imagery, and both films portray someone going on a quest and returning to their tribe after encountering a woman from a more advanced tribe, and in turn also bringing new technology to their own. (Classical Campbellian monomyth.) Also, in both of these films the advancement of technology and civilization is portrayed as relatively unproblematic, naturally, seen with our mythical hind sight. The dissemination of fire (and such) was a prerequisite for the rise of modern man, and it's hard to see how anyone could really resist such progress or feel fear in it's face.

Compare this to another and vividly different piece of modern mythology: the New Flesh as portrayed by David Cronenberg in Videodrome (1983). Videodrome is similar to La guerre du feu in that it concerns the adoption of new technology and civilization on a significant threshold (also they were released almost at the same time). They are different in that Videodrome portrays this as something we fear, while La guerre du feu sees only positive progress. Fire is something we crave, while television is a more dubious matter alltogether - somewhere between a malign tumor and The New Flesh. The New Flesh is a term Cronenberg uses to describe technology that is so intimately woven into our everyday lives that it becomes almost organic to us. Such as fire has been for millenia, and television has been since the sixties. And as we all know, and smart phones, iPads, apps and stuff like that proves: there are early adopters, late adopters and resisters.

I have no idea how humans several thousands of years ago approached fire, but the repercussions to society must have been a great deal more tumultous than the introduction of televised mass media, cable TV, video and violent pornography as in Videodrome, and I can easily see how some people must have been sceptical and even afraid of this innovation.

The interesting bit is of course how our mythic structures change over the years. Films are still portraying electronics with some level of fear, while emphasizing how intimate we are with these dodats. Think of Japanese horror films such as Ringu and One Missed Call. In fifty years time this will seem as quaint as the mechano-horror of the luddites is to most people today. Even further into the future imagining resistance against mobile phones will be as difficult to portray as resistance to fire, the wheel, iron, steel, pottery, granaries and democracy is today.

As load bearing structures of meaning myths say a great deal of the changes a society is going through, and also what's consistent, and what's important in our common psyche. I really wish there were more films out there concerning classical myth material in a "realistic" context. La guerre du deu is as good as it gets, and worth seeing. Even if you're only interested in brawny cavemen battling fierce beasts and making the beast with two backs with painted women. Atleast it's far superior to that Darryl Hannah flick...

A little piece of whaaat?

Here in Norway we have a chocolate called Freia Melkesjokolade (milk chocolate), and to me - as a person interested in national myths, this sweet delight is very interesting. Let me tell you why, and also tell you a little bit about Norwegian nationalism while I'm at it. So here we go!



Earlier today I was riding the subway here in Oslo, and I noticed that Freia has a new ad campaign up. Probably their most mythisizing one ever. (Is that even a word? It is now, and I coined it, and you get to pay me royalties.) Now, their slogan is "et lite stykke Norge" or a little piece of Norway to my international readers, and their latest campaign takes this quite literally. The boards show a small secluded plot of land, with a text explaining why this particular plot was chosen by a named individual. This is good advertising for two reasons, and they both relate to mythic aspects. What Freia does is that they're creating an emotional truth. First because it relates to their slogan, but more importantly because it gives access to someone's personal emotional experience (by proxy) and links it to the tangible and universal experience of eating chocolate. When you eat that chocolate you're eating someones affection for Geirangerfjorden. If you think I'm overdoing it, believe my, I'm not. I've worked with measuring the effect of ad campaigns, and that's the way ad people think. Evidently it works really well too, and the creation of myths and historical patina is probably the most used and successfull form of advertising today. Just look at what Coca Cola is doing with doc Pemberton, or Levi's move away from pure sex, to showing how their clothes were originally worn by miners. Never thought about that now, did you?

Anyway, back to Freia. In addition to building a myth of personal experience linked to a very concrete place Freia is coupling this to their tried and tested ties to national romanticism. Freia is of course the norse goddess of fertility, and the entire image of the chocolate is geared to further a romantic image.

The posters don't depict an urban scene, it's as rural as rural gets - despite the fact that only 2.1% of the Norwegian population are employed in any form of agriculture. You won't see many people with brownish skin either. The Norway we see on those posters is not relevant to most Norwegians except as fables or dreams. We might have seen it passing by in airplanes or trains, and we might even vacation there, but very few of us ever spend much time there. It's Disneyland baby.

This is a significant cultural trope, and a very potent one. One of the most important and renowned poets in Norway, Henrik Wergeland, formulated a theory that highlights the process we are witness to. Of course, Norway was under foreign rule from just after the black plague and up to 1905. Most of the time we were under Danish rule. Wergeland, and others with him, claimed that the original population in Norway and their culture had been partially suplanted by less pure danish counterparts. In particular the language and national virtues such as hospitality, democracy and courage. A typical golden age myth, which is common for most nationalisms, maybe even all. (I've written about that before. Read it.) Wergeland however took this trope further and spoke of what he called "den uægte lodning" ("the untrue solder" in English). Norway's past and future were two halves of gold ring, but the ring had been broken and soldered together with lead. This lead soldering had to be removed, and a national culture had to be reconstructed. The basis for this culture was to be found in rural areas, where Danish culture had failed to penetrate. This theory of course provided the foundation for the creation for what later became "nynorsk" - a constructed national language with radical nationalist content. Nynorsk never really took though - though it's still out there.

What does this purported age of gold have to do with Freia you say? Well, there's the obvious element in that Freia sees the rural areas as more genuinely Norwegian than the multicultural Tøyen. But there's also another fascinating aspect I've never given any thought before. Freia Melkesjokolade comes in a yellow / gold-colored wrapping. Untill a few years ago it was even wrapped in yellow paper, with gold wrapping inside. It's too good to be true.

Finally, it has to be said. Just like all the nationalists that drove our original romantic urge to become Norwegians were educated in Denmark, so is Freia Melkesjokolade's backing to be found abroad. Freia was founded and fully owned by Norwegians in the past, but by now it's long since been sold to ... AMERICANS! The irony is so thick you can walk on it... Like I said: It's Disneyland baby!

For the ad-campaign go here (I wasn't able to find any pictures of the boards):
http://www.freiamelkesjokolade.no/

The Golden Age of King David and the First Temple

The recent action against an unarmed civilian flotilla heading for Gaza with humanitarian aid has appalled a world, and divided oppinions as to the conflict in Israel/Palestine once again. It's not the first time, and certainly not the last. We're talking about a conflict so old and documented it's second to none. Just look at how a term like philistine (palestinian) has entered the english language as an insult implying someone uncouth and uncultured.

To an atheist like myself it is hard to see what these people are fighting over. They have different names and languages, and so what? What is the reason these two peoples can't "just get along"?

The answer lies in the ever elusive concept of myth. More specifically national restoration myths.

Nationalism is a rather complex phenomenon, and I'm not going to go into depth on it. However, myth is a central concept in nationalism, while not necessarily the reasoning behind the ideology. All nations have stories that they feel is central to their understanding of their own identity and are vital for national cohesion. One example is how americans identify with the pioneers and pilgrims who shaped their nation. It is a myth cycle upheld and reinforced through rituals, such as thanksgiving. The myth of the revolutionary war is reinforced through indepence day. These myths also come with a set of perceived values, that are central to the idea of the nation itself: independence, hospitality and family. These values are central to the american idea of life.

This is mostly unproblematic, and only when the myths and values are teamed up with a program for social change or national irredentism something negative and potentially deadly starts to happen.

The most recently well known example of deadly irredentism occured in World War two, when Germany attacked its neighbours with the pretense of wanting to unite germans that had been divided after World War one. This war of national restoration was paired with internal restoration of perceived germanic values. The result was genocidal mania and a war that cost over 50 million lives over six years. More recently we witnessed how Kosovos position on national myth cycles turned ethnic conflicts in Serbia into a potential for ethnic cleansing and civil war.

In the case of Israel we have a strong national myth cycle, reinforced through countless years of existence as diaspora around the world, and persecution, pogroms and discrimination in various shapes and forms. While jewish culture enriched the various contries it existed in, through literature, music and philosophy the diaspora was always self aware of its removal from the holy land. When the Balfour congress, in 1917, decided to create a homeland for jews it was against this background. This was at a time in history when nationalism was seen as a potential way to solve problematic conflicts, and states like Yugoslavia, Poland, Checkoslovakia, Finland, Hungary and Austria were formed to be homelands for various oppressed nations in Europe. Israel had to wait however, because no obvious location for such a nation could be found. While it was decided that Israel would be located in Palestine, it was allready full of people, and other locations (Madagascar, Brazil...) were equally problematic - and unwanted by the Zionist Federation. Eventually it was decided that Israel would in fact be located in Palestine, which is after all the promised land of jewish national myth - Canaan. And in 1948, after quite a bit of trouble and terrorism and fighting, Israel came into existence as a modern state. That's when the real trouble started...

This was for purposes the equivalent of opening up a box of wasps and sticking your penis in there while shaking the box. Palestine had been occupied for quite some time by palestinians, and they had their own perception of the matter. Not only was there a great deal of land to argue over, there was also myth. Particularily myths associated with Jerusalem/Al Quds. Jewish myth focuses on the restoration of the temple on temple mount, only problem is that the Al Aqsa mosque lies there, and that mosque is equally important to palestinian national identity. This is a point of contention so strong that archaelogists are literally trying to prove which culture was there first, by excavating the mount. Israeli extremists want to tear down the mosque, while many palestinians fear that the excavations are actually undermining the mosque in order for demolition. Until the temple of Solomon is rebuilt, the Messiah cannot come, and you really do want him to come.

This is where we enter the land of national restoration myths, or golde age myths. The general idea, that you can find in any and all nationalist political movements around the world is that "once we were glorious, but someone or something took it away from us, and now we need to restore those days". The golden age we are speaking of is the time when the tribes were united under king David. The tribes fell and were spread as diaspora around the world, and now it is up to us to rebuild the past. Quite physically rebuild in this case actually, the symbolism could not be any clearer. The ahistoric ideas of something original and unblemished is central to this kind of thinking. It was even a major part of american electoral campaigns this recent fall. Obama and McCain both spoke about taking america back from Wall Street, and even "back to main street USA". The America they wanted to return has of course never existed, except in blockbuster films and romantic literature about Davy Crocket, or the suburbs before the blacks moved there. It was quite comical to hear these visions, but restoration myths can be quite scary when paired with the notion of an enemy of restoration - such as the jews were to the nazis, the kulaks to the communists, the palestinians to the zionists or communists to McCarthy, or zionists to islamists. It's a really explosive combination.

Most Israelis and Palestinians would be perfectly happy to live next door to each other, send their kids off to the same school and go to see the same lame american romantic comedies, but there are those who are too enthralled with myth to see realities in front of their nose.

To complicate matters further jewish national myth is intertwined with evangelical christian myths, concerning the second coming of christ. Christian extremists around the world support the israeli cause in because Christ cannot return untill the jews have returned to Canaan. I'm not a theologian, but the scriptural basis for these assumptions sound wafer thin to me. I even hear a norwegian pastor speak of secret bases in the desert with a pre-assembled temple waiting to be brought in and rebuildt on the temple mount by way of helicopters. At an unspecified time a signal to demolish the temple would be given, and the palestinians would be exterminated by force. God only knows how this person can continue to recieve tax money to support his cult. Thankfully he is not representative of most christians, though many enough follow his logic.

I can see no end to this conflict. Three out of the five major world religions have their various myths tangled up in a few square miles of estate in Israel and the west bank, and they're not about to agree. "OK, we can sacrifice this symbol in exchange for that one." That's not how it works. People tend to get irrational over myths, and sometimes they even kill for them.

However, for the sake of all the people who have to live in the vicinity of this specific hot piece of real estate, let's hope that these religious dimwits die out as soon as humanly possible. It is a sad affair, and I really hope palestinians and israelis can find a way to live together in peace in times to come. How, I don't know.