Fake Films

There was this neighbor kid, Rene, who was a pathological liar (probably still is,) who told us all these wild stories. Some may even have had a basis on reality, I'm sure he had some kind of life when he wasn't spending time with us.

The one movie he told us about, that I remember, was titled SHARK! and it came out just about the time of Jaws. Of course, since he couldn't see Jaws, he made up his own version of it. It featured a little bald guy being attackd by hundred of sharks and chasing them and fighting them while riding on a motorcycle. It took him weeks and weeks to develop the full story and he would tell us little snipets of this little bald guy doing amazing stunts while hunting sharks.

I am also guilty of this, once I became a connoisseur, I would tell people about these weird movies, and describe the most incredible events in them in an exaggerated manner and adding mind boggling stuff in a simple throwaway manner. Of course they did not believe me, but I was simply describing Smoky Mountain Christmas (Dolly Parton in a Snow White role) or Killer Klowns from Outer Space or some other such nonsense or ridiculous premise that actually got made into a movie.

They I would just laugh the whole time as they got to see the movie in amazement.

Images Of Male Fertility Gods In Cinema

There have certainly been lots of male fertility symbols, typically phallic in origin in the past.
If you look for them in art, you will see lots of representations of male fertility, maybe they are not particularily identified or named as an official fertility god, but they function as symbols of one.
All you need to do is look.
I can easily think of pre-Colombian or other American images with giant phalluses.
You will also find them in Indian architecture and art. Unfortunately this art is destroyed or hidden away by modern culture.
I am not a historian, but I can easily extrapolate that if they are hidden or destroyed in the current cultural climate, they are likely to have also been destroyed in the past.
Did the Spanish not destroy most records, art and architecture of the Mesoamerican cultures?
The comic genre devoted to sex (among other adult subject matter) is know as Underground Comix.

Currently, phallic symbols are still used by men. Ties, skyscrapers, cigars, guns, etc. Whether by intent or not is debatable, but ultimately they are interpreted as phallic symbols even after the fact.

Now, as to what I mean by Male Fertility God, obviously one that is officially recognized as one, but also an icon that has taken over the role, or has filled the cultural void in the absence resulting from the disappearance of the religion or cult that worshiped them. In the same way that Santa Claus comes not only from the story of Nicholas of Myra, but also from traditions of Odin, Ruebezahl and Knecht Ruprecht, among others.
The Easter Bunny, (though sometimes seen as female, but often as male,) mentioned earlier becomes a symbol of Spring, birth and fertility, thus a fertility god.

I just finished reading Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett. It is basically a reworking of Midsummer Night's Dream, but set in Discworld.

Of course Oberon and Titania are there, though not mentioned by those names.

On the one had we have the Queen of the Elves and then there is her Husband (played in this photo by Patrick Stewart).



The Husband lives under a mountain with a giant sign of male genitalia, and though the King of Elves is supposed to be similarly endowed, a dwarf comments that he is not half of what he is supposed to be, maybe referring to his general size or maybe his endowment (which makes for a good joke, but not much sense, since he only appears to be, his real nature is something else entirely.)

Here is a similar giant as seen in Religulous:




I can think of two movies featuring the Green Man but can find no good photos: The Green Man (1990) and Gawain and the Green Knight (1973.)



The King appears as a horned giant, and immediately made me think of this drawing.



But also of the many horned hart of Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke:



and in turn of the forest giant, since they are two faces of the same god:



For example the Tororo spirit in My Neighbor Totoro, seems to have a shrine, even if no actual worshippers or cult. Maybe the shrine was for the overall forest and not specifically build to worship/venerate him, though the girls' father seems to imply that.

A forest spirit (or god or demon) that spreads seeds around (and gives them to girls/women) and makes plants sprout and trees grow is not, maybe, a Fertility God, but has to be seen as a spirit closely related to fertility of a kind.
Here I am assuming that Totoro is a male god, though I have no idea if gender even applies to him/her. I know Miyazaki has detailed Totoro's background further, but am not aware of specific discussions of sex.
And while Totoro is probably related to the Mononoke Forest God, at least conceptually, I don't know that Miyazaki consciously intended a connection.

Hellboy II has an intimate connection to Mononoke, in that Del Toro used a similar forest elemental giant:



And also a horned King of Elves/Faerie:



Which makes sense, since both figures are linked to male fertility, although in this case the forest elemental is a separate agent of the King, and not the King himself.

Now, let me point out that I am an idiot, and that it took me this long to see that both aspects of the Shishigami are not merely a Japanese religion/myth conception, but more universal myth figures.

This chain of thought made me start thinking of all the different manifestations of Male fertility gods, which include satyrs, the god Pan, and lead up to the "modern" versions of devils and their connection with goats (horns, hoofed feet, etc.)



This includes the conception of Hellboy himself. Thus the Elf King, and Hellboy are two different aspects of the Male fertility god.



Why are two fertility gods featured in the same movie?

Well, that is simple. Hellboy is named as the Destroyer Of Worlds, which I initially thought meant it in the Catholic sense of bringing the ultimate end of the world and somehow the end of Mankind (and not merely the end of the world as we know it.)

As we see, Hellboy II, not only brings upon the death of the King of Elves, but that of his son and daugther (who happen to be twins.) Hellboy then engenders two twins himself, (did it really take me this long to see this? Duh!)

Thus Hellboy is bringing upon the end of the world of Elves (Destroyer Of Worlds, remember?) while replacing it with a new world of his own progeny. Did the prince not clearly state that he would not be challenged/replaced by someone not of royal blood?

If you recall there is also a fertility goddess or that giant Willendorf Venus during the auction scene. (Of course, Hellboy knocks it down!)



And Hellboy doesn't merely reproduce by himself, he needs Firegirl to do this.

So Female Fertility also plays in all of this, though Male Fertility is featured more prominently.

The difficult thing is trying to figure out what DelToro's intentions are, and whether he isn't simply throwing everything but the kitchen sink in there!


On a different issue, I started to think how Christianity addressed the subject of male fertility.
As I've said the goat imagery is taken care of in representations of the devil, but it is not generally considered a good or positive thing.



I think the image of Christ somehow takes care of it but substitutes the reproduction by way of seed to a reproduction by way of blood.

Maybe the seed and the blood are one and the same thing from a Mythical perspective.

Also, the Lords And Ladies novel reminds us of the Elves' aversion to iron.
With all of that thought on different mythologies I thought it was weird that Christ was killed by iron (nails, spear,) and in this way the Christ myth becomes sort of Faerie-like in that sense.

Since Christ is descended from David, and Solomon, and Solomon was supposed to mess around with genii and efreets and such, could Christ as myth not have had the opportunity to have Faerie blood in him?

I know Christ as alien has been done (Demon/God Told Me To,) but has Christ as Faerie ever been done? Can the thorn crown be seen as an mythic visual evolution of the horns associated with a Faerie King?



I guess the Easter Bunny is no substitute for a Fertility God, Huh?

I thought of The Wicker Man, But I couldn't really remember any Male Fertility imagery, it's been a while. There's probably horns in there somewhere...

The dirty song at the pub has more to do with female sexuality than male. Maybe the Maypoles...



Here in California there is not much of a Maypole tradition, but I've been at some Renaissance Festivals where Maypole dances get pretty wild, Panic and Saturnalia all rolled into one.

And, is that where they show the snails (hermaphrodites) having sex? Or am I confusing it with La Bete (which also features snail sex)?

This is the other side of the coin, and I was thinking of this while lying in bed this morning. This is the first go and I'll polish it up during the next few days, but I wanted to put it down.

I ended the previous article on the Easter Bunny, which is fitting, since it represents an emasculation of sorts of Male Fertility Gods. In general, maybe in Western or American culture the Fertility Gods have gone underground. They are still there, but in hiding.

Highly iconic fertility images (horns) are no longer used very often, but the Superhero as a Male Hero or God is still there. However, the Superhero is strangely lacking in virility.

Yes, we still have James Bond, and we still have Captain Kirk, but for the most part the Superhero is expected to behave in a chaste manner. I can quickly mention a few examples: Superman II, shows Superman having to renounce his powers to be able to engage in sexual activity.

The Hulk, sidesteps the sex issue in his new movie. While the scene is funny and adequately worked into the story, it reinforces the adolescent (read chaste or immature, your choice,) nature of the hero.

Another example is the White Cowboy in Rustler's Rapsody, who loses his mojo if he engages in sex (read, if he matures.) In a way this example relates to the myth of Galahad (from The Once And Future King, I haven't read Morte D'Arthur) who is so pure that he ceases to be human, and becomes almost angelic.

The nature of Galahad is, however, misunderstood in Western Cinema, since Lancelot did not need to be that pure to excel at being Arthur's champion. Remember, he was boning Guenevere all that time.

So, do heroes need to be chaste? I say no to that. I say that the modern chaste hero is more a result of Puritanical influence than out of any actual need of heroic purity.
The Greek heroes certainly were not pure. And I've already mentioned Lancelot.

The other option for the existence of this perpetual adolescence is a denial of Death, as I've mentioned in another thread. An attempt at a denial of Death brings about a denial of growth in addition to a denial of maturity.
La petite mort refers to the period after orgasm (sex.)
And General Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove denies women his "essence," for some reason or other, but likely related to adolescent fears of death.

Is it that by engendering a child, you are thereby creating your replacement and thus become obsolete? Possibly that as well, but it doesn't cease to be an immature fear.

I am looking at maturity in two different ways. One implies reproduction. A seed is not mature till it is able to reproduce. Thus these heroes, stand-ins for Male Fertility Gods, are immature till they show an ability to reproduce.
James Bond has no kids. Both Indiana Jones and James T. Kirk are cheated into maturing. They engage in adolescent behavior their whole lives.
They have kids and are not even aware of it, thus show no growth or maturity. (And here we go full circle, since Kirk's surrogate, Picard, played by Patrick Stewart is shown as Oberon above.)

Over the course of several movies none of these, or Superman, or Batman, or Spiderman ever truly mature.
The other aspect is that these superheroes are born out of adolescent fantasies of empowerment, thus by origin, immature.

Witness attempts at allowing growth and maturity for the Superheroes in Chasing Amy's scene with Stan Lee, by acknowledging their sex lives.
In Superman II he loses his super powers by engaging in adult activities (maturing) and regains them by "erasing" the events. In Superman Returns, the writers have a dilemma of sorts, in that they acknowledge these events, but Superman becomes, then, a cuckoo, in addition to an irresponsible, absent, immature father.
I cannot imagine George Reeves' Superman ever doing any of this. His Superman was always very fatherly to begin with, except, of course that he is TV celibate (immature.)

Hellboy, refreshingly, matures over the course of two movies. And, if you discount the first film, he grows from child to mature adult in only his second film, resulting in two offspring.

I think this has to do with Guillermo Del Toro's own maturity as an artist, see, for example, his concerns regarding children in Mimic, El Espinazo Del Diablo, but also due to his status as an North American and Hollywood outsider.

The Puritanical influence is minimal in his artistic/creative makeup.

So where are the Fertility God icons? The answer to that is that partially this function has been relegated to the movie stars themselves, their view by the public as Sex Symbols in a way takes care of this, even if as sex symbols they barely take care of the reproduction aspect.

They are very deficient as Fertility God icons.

The other option is to look underground. Take a look at Stag or Adult Films (hey.. ...stag, there is that horn imagery again!) The Adult film industry has never gone away. It simply lies beneath the surface. And the actors and actresses main cultural job is to function as the priests and priestesses of the modern Fertility Gods.

Every once in a while (Flesh Gordon) we still get a genre movie that is simply a silly celebration of virility and sexuality.



Maybe this underground aspect of fertility gods has always been there.

I don't doubt it.

There certainly are private collections and museums of historic sex related ephemera, but they remain obscure and hidden.

I do acknowledge that comics, a different media than film, has allowed the superheroes to mature, have children and die. Superman, for example has done all of these.

But even comics fail to address proper or realistic aspects or fertility, for example, Superman is an alien with different gene plasm than that of a human being, thus would not be able to reproduce. Also his stories fail to address the Man Of Steel, Woman Of Kleenex aspect of said reproduction.

http://www.rawbw.com/~svw/superman.html

For now, I am only addressing Cinema.

Los Cronocrimenes (a.k.a. Timecrimes) 2007 - Film Review

Los Cronocrimenes (2007) A time travel story very much in the vein of Memento, and if you are familiar with Heinlein's All You Zombies, or By His Bootstraps, you pretty much know what to expect, storywise. However, the movie is a tight little, enjoyable, thriller. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmi3OY7cQfA This is Heinlein's Worm Of Ouroboros theory. As far as I know it's the first time it's been done on film, but there are plenty of literary antecedents. The "plot hole" is no plot hole at all, it is simply your typical time travel paradox, which no one really wants to address, even Dr. Who tries to stay away from them at all costs. In Stainless Steel Rat, the simple act of the first ever, initial trip thru time disrupts the continuum enough to generate something even worse than this. Once a working time machine is built it is inevitable that it will be used, even if only to test it, or to travel thru time and end up stepping on a butterfly (The Sound Of Thunder.) They only way to avoid it is never to attempt time travel or to never build a working time machine. The "plot hole," that is, showing the time travel paradox is the entire reason for the film, or for stories like Bradbury's, Heinlein's or Fredric Brown's. The character here becomes a willing slave of time, in part because he is told he must be. Yet if he did not do that he could possibly have avoided everything that happened, depending on which theory of time travel you look at. If you believe that there are small deviations in the story, than the answer is that he could have avoided all of it. If you believe that there are no changes then he is already a time slave, as are all of us. In a nutshell let me describe Robert A. Heinlein's All You Zombies: Girl is born and abandoned in an orphan home. Girl grows up and is seduced and made pregnant by mysterious man. During delivery girl finds out she is a hermaphrodite and since her female organs are now messed up she needs to live the rest of her life as a he, so she goes under the knife and becomes a he. Resulting baby girl is adopted by mysterious stranger. Man becomes involved in time travel experiment and travels to the past. Man seeks girl, seduces her and impregnates her. Travels to time of delivery, adopts baby, and takes it back in time to leave at orphan home. You can see now how the story goes. There is no beginning and there is no end. We are describing the worm that eats its own tail. You can say there is a plot hole there, but you'd be missing the point. Causality no longer works in a conventional sense since we are not dealing with normal time flow. The whole thing is not a conventional story, it is an exercise where the author attempts to study (probably) the most extreme time paradox possible. There are some time travel stories that feature "Time Police" who go around trying to fix paradoxes that time travelers get themselves into. When they fix a time mistake, they sometimes end up with little time loops isolated from the overall time stream. This movie describes just such a leftover loop. If you do not see the cause of it all, it may be just because it's been erased already by yet an additional travel thru time. The cause has been erased, it no longer exists, and the effects of the error have been sealed away on its own little time loop. I'm am not saying that the makers even intended this. But if you need it, there it is. In Dark City, you have a similar situation. There is no beginning, because there is no memory of one (the memory was erased.) You can go outside the story and try and figure something out, but the story itself will not give you a solution to what is, in effect, already unsolvable. Jack Finney (From Time To Time, Time And Again) came up with a neat trick, he allows Time to heal itself of paradoxes. You are allowed to go back and kill Gramps, but then you cease to 'exist,' and the time stream changes. People who knew you forget you or events that relate to you, yet, even though you no longer 'exist,' some might have feelings such as deja vu concerning you and the events surrounding you. Someone outside of the time stream is still allowed to remember you. But Gramps remains dead. According to Finney's version of time travel, this guy could have been free to do or not do whatever he wanted. He would have had to live with the consequences, but would not have disappeared nor have the Universe disappear with him if he did not attempt to slavishly follow the memories he had. Fredric Brown explored all the different options for time travel in his short short stories. Back To The Future addresses the matter in a ridiculous way, McFly starts to disappear little by little so that he has an opportunity to fix the paradox. And yet, the rules allow him to change the future, and go back to a new life, where the possibility of him existing simply because his parents got together again (for the second time,) somehow does not get eradicated. What are the chances that even after that change in life, the parents had sex at the same time, with the same resulting egg and sperm that would result in Marty a second time? I don't remember any SF fan being bothered by this enough to deny the Nebula Award to the movie. Yes, there is a paradox, and by its very nature there is no solution. As I've said, other authors shy away from them. You basically have two alternatives, simply restructure the events so that effect follows cause (The Time Travelers, where you still get the resulting time loop,) or have Hector never meet himself (The Time Machine, which hardly explores the concept of time travel, they might as well have just had the guy make a spaceship that goes to the Morlock planet.) But, then, you don't get to blow the viewer's mind... The Terminator series, Back To The Future series all deal with paradoxes, and no one seems to complain. The artistic choice to present the paradox openly is a brave and valid one in my opinion. Otherwise you get cheated out of the real monsters (Mark Of The Vampire, Scooby Doo.) Also, don't miss the short 7:35 En La Manana included in the DVD, it's a neat little comment on musicals and movies vs reality. Will have some more comments when I finish watching it. --- Ok, I finished watching it, and here are my final comments. I am very impressed by it. The story can be read on several different levels. Some comments have been made that the decision to present the paradox in this manner is somehow an artistic mistake. I do not think so. The authors are using a language that is well known in the SF readership community. In any event, the whole time travel thing is nothing more than a MacGuffin. The authors follow their own rules and don't cheat the audience. They are logically consistent. So I have no problem with the paradox. The important aspect of the story is not the external time travel paradox that is presented, but the internal changes it provokes in its main character. The character Hector is presented in three distinct stages. Stage One in which he is told the universe is what it is and he cannot change his destiny, and where he believes this so. Stage Two, which is an intermediate stage where he begins to suspect that he might be able to change his life destiny, but in the meantime is running around trying to catch up with events and still attempting to follow the rules. And Stage Three in which he realizes he must become responsible of his destiny (there are no rules,) he must pay a high price for being responsible, but there is not much of a choice since the result of being irresponsible is an even bigger price (it does however come the added trade-off comfort of knowing he is not responsible for it; Karma, Destiny, the Universe or God is.) So which is it, do you let the Universe alone and claim you are not responsible for whatever becomes of it? Or do you take responsibility and live with the choices you must make? In the process of the story we also see what might be construed as the effects of a casual fling in the life of a(n apparently) happily married character, and the steps (and high price that must be paid) to resolve it. Yes, the story is about a crime, but in reality it is no more criminal than the irresponsible restructuring of the universe that is created by Marty McFly in the Back To The Future film, or the Tales From The Darkside, The Word Processor of the Gods (1984) episode, it is more like the hard decision that the Mom must make in The Good Son.