1.0: Contents /
2.0–2.5: "Identity" /
3.0–3.5: A Macabre Tax /
4.0–4.1: Baal-zebub /
5.0–5.4: Paranoia /
6.0–6.3: "Devil's Elixir" /
7.0–7.8: The Sage /
8.0–8.5: The Christian Genius /
9.0–9.4: A Paradigm Shift /
10.0–10.2: Disclaimer //.
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2.0 — "Identity": An analysis of the film: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, would be incomplete with-out a commentary on that which is symbolically refused in the film's narrative: "mother-hood". Hence the film's title: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, that consists of an exclamatory phrase using the second-person pronoun: 'you'.
2.1 — The phrase is unusual because it's subject suggests a second-person form of distance to exist between the relations of the mother and child, in which case, the child or some-one who the woman mistakens for her child is probably making the exclamation to some-one not the mother of the person.
2.2 — Further, the phrase is unexpected because a mother typically knows who her children are. Conversely, a child will know her mother. The matter is one rarely confused, at least, that is the standard perception. According to Western World traditions, a mother represents some-one's origins, such as from whom some-one is born in to family as to establish social contexts and status.
2.3 — The importance placed upon parentage, familial origins and ancestry within Western World culture involves the special significance Christianity places upon personal identity.
2.4 — Many Asian countries once respectively named a child after his or her father or mother; little difference was perceived to exist between the parent and child, or children. The use of a Christian name, that is, a first name, acknowledged a difference between the parent and child as being one of character and soul, such that each person could be judged in reference to his or her own relation to God.
2.5 — The film's protagonist, named 'Char', is grossly ascribed that name because the character immolates her mother. To 'char' is to burn slightly, a back-formation of the noun: 'charcoal'. The name suggests a predisposition to burn—such that the question needs to be asked: is 'Char' a "pet name" attributed to her to predispose her to commit the act of burning, and in this case, burning and killing people? If yes, then, her family has encouraged such a disposition by way of "nominal determination", in which a noun as a pronoun has a defining impact on some-one's behaviour, that is, Char will probably char some-one more than some-one named Carol.
3.0 — A Macabre Tax: In Part III., my previous blog regarding: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, I have hypothesised that an arrangement of the family is made in which the hidden figure of Mephistopheles, most probably an older man, demands from the man of the house, as exemplified by the character of Aaron, to pay his way through providing him infants who will be at his mercy; that, in terms of common knowledge of the criminality involved with black-birding, may herald a system of child trafficking: a topic that is often elided in texts of Western World cultures as not so much taboo, but incomprehensibly horrorific.
3.1 — None of that sub-plot of a macabre tax, mentioned here, is necessarily narrated in the film: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, because of it's engendering taboo; nonetheless it is considered as still active to the narrative, only the sub-plot has been censored.
Figure 1. 'Faust And Marguerite In The Garden', circa 1846, oil on canvas, 218 cm x 135 cm, part of a private collection at New York, by Ary Scheffer.
3.2 — It is argued because of the points of parallel between a text that is found to forward the position and role of Mephistopheles—the exemplum being the text: 'Faust', circa 1880, by the German Wolfgang Goethe—Kate Dolan's film of 2021 is considered a highly censored version of this arch-narrative.
3.3 — One of the points which find no parallel to 'Faust', circa 1880, is the variant of the man of the house, Aaron, instead of Faust selling his soul to the devil, the man of the house pays off the devil with his children. Note, a man is, often according to patriarchy, his sons, or his sons are his soul: a symbolic inter-change represented in the Christian doctrine of Trinitarianism as a connection made through God.
3.4 — A further variation of the Faust narrative is found in what may have been one of Wolfgang Goethe's inspirations for the 'Faust' narrative, viz. 'The History Of The Caliph Vathek', circa 1782, originally published in French by the Englishman, William Beckford, the text was translated to English by Reverend Samuel Henley.
3.5 — "Vathek", as the text is referenced, involves a devilish figure, Giaour—a name that implies he is an infidel, or gabr, that is, a Zoroastrian magician—with who the protagonist, Vathek, bargains the lives of fifty children in order he gain great knowledge and enter: "the palace of the subterrain fire", where resides Soliman Ben Daoud, a Jewish, Israeli magician-king, who controls the talismans which control the world. The motif of the killing of fifty innocents, that is, children, is entered in a type of "Faustian bargain".
4.0 — Baal-zebub: The killing of fifty people is a motif with possible allusions to: 2 Kings 1:3–14, of the Old Testament, in which the prophet Elijah is involved with a "righteous kill" by means of divine fire of fifty Israeli or Philistine men. The killing of the fifty men is deemed righteous, because the fire is divine, sent from the heavens, to smote men representative of a lack of conscience. "Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron?"—Elijah is recorded as asking the Israeli monarch, Ahaziah.
4.1 — Baal-zebub, according to a number of Christian theological discourses, is one of the seven princes of Hell—each being a personification of the seven deadly sins—and Baal-zebub is a permutation of Satan, in a symbolic inter-change that is characterised by a high degree of morphology, in which case, Baal-zebub may also be a variant of Mephistopheles: both servants of Lucifer, the General and ruler of the legion of Hell.
5.0 — Paranoia: 'The Necromancer; Or, The Tale Of The Black Forest', circa 1794, by Karl Friedrich Kahlert, published under the pseudonym, Lawrence Flammenberg, involves a sorcerer who acts as a former lord of a castle, is discovered to be: 'a very wicked and irreligious man who found great delight in tormenting the poor pesants', to exhibit the killing of blameless persons, that demonstrates paranoia, not reasonable suspicion.
5.1 — Later in the narrative it is learned, the necromancer, so named because of his performance of black magic in the castle's dungeon, was a servant of a lord under whose tutelage he adopted the lore of black magic, through which various misdeeds and greater crimes were committed.
5.2 — The highly censored version of the arch-narrative that is found in the filmic text: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, arguably dissolves the macabre or Satanic aspects, which might incriminate the older father figure, a type of land-lord, who evades the accusatory blame for the familial organisation and suspicion to fall on the mother.
5.3 — The textual variation may, in fact, pursue a vein of suspicion that was known to dislocate the relationships between fathers and sons; a circumstance that is arguably more easily arranged because of the mother's close proximity to the infant during birth, and the almost ubiquitous paternity test that has been applied across cultures for approximately a century.
5.4 — The failing of recognition of a beloved is to be taken a demonstration of the failing or non-existence of love. How could some-one not recognise their beloved?
6.0 — "Devil's Elixir": When lithium is abused to deliberately cause amnesia, the problem is the drug, the poison, and what the poison represents: acts of revenge, such as to involve the fathers against the mothers—at least it is inferred—for removing the men's role as father.
6.1 — The use of poison, but as it is dubbed an elixir, is found in the narrative variation of 'Faust' in E.T.A. Hoffmann's 'The Devil's Elixirs', circa 1815. In this variant of the arch-narrative, 'Faust' a Capuchin monk, Medardus, is placed in charge of a monastery's relics, learns of the devil's elixir, which when consumed consigns ownership to the devil, but entwines any other who consumes the elixir to the other one who took drink of it.
6.2 — Not quite a potion, lithium is provided as dissolvable powder-compressed tablets which may be crushed and placed in consumable liquids or foods, such that it is plausible, it's use is out-side prescriptions, and out-side moral orthodoxies such as to symbolise the presence of devilish motives.
6.3 — One must wonder as to whether an inter-cultural warring rages on between cousins of different tribes, such as to be involved with the Jews, or Phœnicians, Palestinians and Christians?
7.0 — The Sage: Whether the filmic text: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, that is almost completely denuded of cultural symbolism, could connect the discourses to a historical sense of meaningfulness, ought to be queried, because a psychotic state of foreclosure could arguably be considered the norm for partly ethnically Celtic, Irish teenage girls.
7.1 — The North Dublin suburban setting shown within Kate Dolan's film, certainly is stripped of Christian symbolism, but a type of Neo-pagan sage, that is, green leafed twigs rounded in to a ball, referred to as a good luck charm, is one of the few visual symbols to emerge in the film to which a wicca or neo-pagan influence is indicated—that is, amidst the Halloween carnival of night-marish costumes—as prevalent through-out Ireland.
Figure 2. A detail of a still of 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021: during the film's finale, Char hands Angela a sage charm, as part of her fantasy her mother remains alive.
7.2 — The sage, a type of talisman, is a symbol of the globe or world, in which there are no regional boundaries, but a type of pantheism, in which the truth is found in universality, whereby boundaries and differences, cultural and political, are perceived as illusory—in reality, all is emergent of the one in complex uniformity.
7.3 — During the 16th century the British Isles started to show signs of scientific discourse connected with Christian doctrines, with the advent of the encyclopædia that was integrated in to Christian texts used by missionaries against those who would misuse knowledge, advocates of the Anti-Christ.
7.4 — 'The Tragical History Of The Life And Death Of Doctor Faustus', circa 1593, by the Elizabethan play-wright Christopher Marlowe, was in part inspired by the man of science, art and Christianity, the "doctor mirabilis", Roger Bacon, circa. 1220, born near Ilchester, Somerset, England, until circa 1292, Near Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, who wrote 'Opus Majus', circa 1267, designed for Christian missionaries against those of the Anti-Christ who claimed to know greater than the Christian clergy.
7.5 — Another Elizabethan dramatist, Robert Greene, wrote the play: 'Friar Bacon And Friar Bungay', that was entered in to the Stationers' Register (a trade guild) 14 May 1594, as a dramatisation of Roger Bacon, who may consequently be regarded as identifying the figure of Doctor Faust who has partaken of too much knowledge has found him-self party to the "Faustian bargain".
7.6 — The theme of the Faustian bargain is prevalent henceforth in British literature, such as further represented by the play: 'The Merry Devil Of Edmonton', printed circa 1608, attributed to William Shakespeare, that narrates a pact made between a devil and magician—whether parents will consent to their children's education involving references to the devil, may decide as to whether the text is William Shakespeare's or not.
7.7 — The text that is officially attributed to William Shakespeare and that celebrates the supremacy of the magician-king, Prospero, is: 'The Tempest' circa 1610, in which his daughter, Miranda, is tutored by him, and conducts her father's plans; possibly as Char is found to eliminate her mother for her father's sake.
7.8 — Ben Jonson's satirical plays, 'The Alchemist', circa 1610, entertains the pseudo-pharmacist figure of science and superstition the alchemist at the center of a complex of social organisation, replete with eccentricities and irrationality, that is similarly treated in Ben Jonson's 'The Devil Is An Ass', first performed circa 1616 and first published circa 1631, to mock a society interwoven by a sub-culture beholden to the "Faustian bargain".
Figure 3. A statue of Roger Bacon holding a globe, at the University of Oxford, Britain.
8.0 — The Christian Genius: The point of Roger Bacon, circa 1220, Ilchester, Britain, until circa 1292, Oxford, Britain, as the British Isles's great man of knowledge, it's veritable 'magus', similar to a term of reference that had yet to gain it's popular world-wide appeal, viz. 'genius', emerges as a key figure of English-language based early modernity.
8.1 — Where the term magus is used, the term of doctor or professor and, or, or minister, was used in reference to the Christian man of learning: as found represented by the historical figures of Anselm of Canterbury, William of Ockam, or out-side of the British Isles, Albertus Magnus of Germany or Thomas Aquinas, France—for example.
8.2 — Such figures of scholasticism are often over-looked for their focus on the disciplines of the humanities, areas of skill and knowledge considered less lucrative than, figuratively speaking, the science of making gold, alchemy.
8.3 — Possibly, the man of Christian culture is of that genius of creativity connected to the arts, in which Leonardo da Vinci figures largely, who nowadays is so appraised for the monetary value of his works than anything else: refer to the documentary film: 'The Lost Leonardo, premiered 13 June 2021, directed by Andreas Koefoed.
8.4 — Comparatively, the evil genius, super-natural or some disguised fiend, Mephistopheles, is diminished in significance only as a ploy, viz. to delimit speculation that he is culpable of crimes and wanton despotism. The inference is, according to Kate Dolan's film of circa 2021, that he acts increasingly in a space of society, in which that society—the women and children—can only barely remember, if at all, his involvements, that is due to abuses of medical treatments, such as lithium.
8.5 — The speculative field is laid bare in films, such as: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, it would seem, to contemplate whether the grand-mother, son or daughter, are responsible for the immolation of the mother.
9.0 — A Paradigm Shift: The mother being the pre-eminent figure, symbolic of the primary care giver, is made subject to a doubt of identification and authentication, such that the mother is needed less than that paradigm of care found advocated within Christianity, such as symbolised by The Nativity Of Jesus Christ, particularly by the Madonna and child, or per Eastern Orthodox Church, the Theotokos, is a symbolism pervasive through-out the visual arts of millennia?
9.1 — Are the feelings of trust, love and compassion, similar to the doctrines of Christianity, as easily dismissed as imagined, because society, secretly crafted by that svengali figure, Mephistopheles, finds only power attractive?
9.2 — The values of society seem to be misplaced due to a submerged political discourse that ought to surface; in which the Mephistopheleses of the world ought to put down their disguises and reveal them-selves; to answer the question: wherefore, causing corrosion of the family and institutions of the church and education, viz. scholasticism?
10.1 — Four photographs have been used within this blog: Figures 1 to 3; each of which is identified to a resource and is used within the editorial rights' context.
10.2 — Craig Steven Joseph Lacey, 4 December 1976–, Australia; 189 Leichhardt Street, Spring Hill, Queensland, Australia, 4000; Ⓒ 2022, Craig Steven Joseph Lacey.
☆☆☆
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