1.0: BLOG'S TITLE: PART I. RE THE FILMS: SUSPIRIA, CIRCA 1977, 99 MINUTES, AND: THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, CIRCA 1970, 96 MINUTES; BOTH DIRECTED BY DARIO ARGENTO—A COMMENTARY BY CRAIG STEVEN JOSEPH LACEY, 23 MARCH 2024 /
1.1: BLOG'S CONTENTS —
2.0–2.3: DISCLAIMER /
3.0–3.2: DATES OF RESEARCH / WRITING AND PUBLICATION /
4.0–4.4: A BRIEF FOREWORD: ON MY HAVING BEEN A CHANGELING /
5.0–5.4: REGARDING "THE TAXI SEQUENCES" OF THE FILM: SUSPIRIA, CIRCA 1977, 99 MINUTES, DIRECTED BY DARIO ARGENTO /
6.0–6.13: (A) PROTRACTED; THE TAXI SEQUENCES OF SUSPIRIA, CIRCA 1977, 99 MINUTES /
7.0 –7.1: (B) OVER-EDITED; THE TAXI SEQUENCE OF SUSPIRIA, CIRCA 1977, 99 MINUTES /
8.0–8.12: "MONSTERS ARE NOT BORN, BUT CREATED" /
9.0–9.7: A FATAL SUBSTITUTION AND SACRIFICE /
10.0 –10.10: "TURN THE BLUE IRIS" /
11.0 –11.9: THE TAXI-DRIVER AS SATYR /
12.0–12.9: THE BIRD CONNECTION /
13.0–13.14: PROTO-SATANIC, NEO-PAGAN FOLK-LORISM /
14.0–14.12: THE POST-MODERN ART DIRECTION OF SUSPIRIA, CIRCA 1977, 99 MINUTES /
15.0: ON THIS BLOG'S USE OF PHOTOGRAPHY: A total of six film stills from: Suspiria, circa 1977, are included in this blog, specifically directly beneath points: 6.8; 11.7; 12.2; 12.7; 14.8; 14.11 /
15.1: A photograph of the film poster for The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, circa 1970, is directly beneath point 12.2 /
15.2: A photograph of the "ten virgins" sculptures of Madgeburg Cathedral's Paradise Door is directly beneath point 12.3 //
+++
2.0 - DISCLAIMER.
2.1 - Changing, copying or disseminating this blog is strictly prohibited.
2.2 - The data within this
blog is protected, per the Copyright Act circa 1988 of Australia, being only for the use of its researcher and writer, viz. Craig Steven Joseph Lacey, 4 December 1976–, Australia.
2.3 - Per the Cybercrime Act 2001 (Act Number 161) of Australia, fines and/or prosecution will apply per Australian and International law in reference to unauthorised access of this blog on Google.com and other storage devices with the data.
+++
3.0 - DATES OF RESEARCH / WRITING AND PUBLICATION.
3.1 - This blog was started at 19.03.2024 and completed 23.03.2024, as researched and composed by Craig Steven Joseph Lacey at Brisbane City, Queensland, Australia, 4000.
3.2 - Last up-dated: 10:02, 31.03.2024, AEST.
+++
4.0 - A BRIEF FOREWORD: ON MY HAVING BEEN A CHANGELING.
4.1 - My writing on the changeling mythos over the past two years in the blogger site: thoughtsdisjecramembra at URL: <http://thoughtsdisjectamembra.blogspot.com>, was finished mostly in a vacuum on the topic, apart from the exception of the folk-lorist scholar, Dee L. Ashliman, 1 January 1938–, the changeling exists in folk-tales, books, plays, music, films and visual art—refer to: Dee L. Ashliman's website, accessed 26.03.2024, from URL: <https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/ashliman.html>.
4.2 - That is, as far as I am aware: as access to information is made available or unavailable to myself.
4.3 - During my child-hood I was labelled by "proto-Satanists" to be a "changeling" in Australia and other countries, owing to a birth-mark above my right ankle, and I have mostly relied on my own experiences as a "changeling" in discussing such matters here in my blogs.
4.4 - The not unrelated topic of the witch—that is: "the hag"—is an old, thoroughly discussed matter per often infantalized folk-lore or mythological narratives, but more significantly the witch / hag symbolism offers a socio-cultural discourse as a key part of recent inter-textual art, such as novels and films, that are specifically connected to a Satanic and Christaphobic sub-text, which I argue about in reference to socio-cultural and political arguments through sociological / film-based theoretical approaches and insights provided by my own experiences.
+++
5.0 - REGARDING "THE TAXI SEQUENCES" OF THE FILM: SUSPIRIA, CIRCA 1977, 99 MINUTES, DIRECTED BY DARIO ARGENTO.
5.1 - The start of the film: Suspiria, circa 1977, 99 minutes, directed by Dario Argento, involves what I will refer to as "the taxi sequences" which are both:
5.2 - (A) Protracted: with moments which dwell for too long of a time on Susie Bannion's face as a passenger who gazes out at the rain and Black Forest, and—
5.3 - (B) Over-edited: the taxi sequence is without narrational completion; a final sequence is edited out; such that the question begs answering: for what reason?
5.4 - Both (A) and (B) are discussed in detail beneath to arrive at something of an answer to that question, viz. a proto-Satanic, neo-pagan folk-lore / mythos discovered to operate in the filmic narrative upon a Christian setting and culture.
+++
6.0 - (A) PROTRACTED; THE TAXI SEQUENCES OF: SUSPIRIA, CIRCA 1977, 99 MINUTES.
6.1 - The opening sequences of the protagonist Susie Bannion, acted by Jessica Harper, riding a taxi to The Whale House, viz. the Tanz / Ballet Akademie itself, at Freiburg, Baaden-Würternberg, Germany, occupies about the first ten minutes of the film.
6.2 - Susie is shown to be "the passenger",
who, while paying for her ride, remains at the whims of the driver who may exploit her ignorance of the locality and her female physicality.
6.3 - There could be moments of the taxi-man as the ferry-man on the river Styx—an early reference to Susie as Iris, the bearer of a cup of water of the river Styx, by which Iris poisons those who perjure themselves to induce their sleep.
6.4 - Greek mythology seems distant to such modern, German, late-1970s contexts and now, to the 2020s, but there are later definite indications the witches are cultural successors of the harpies of the Strophades islands, Greece, and there is then the name and ethnic identity of the character of Helena Markos, a Greek immigrant, who is none other than Mother Suspiria, the director of the Akademie and head witch of the coven.
6.5 - Such portentousness in a matter as mundane as catching a taxi to a location requires a shift in cultural perceptions, possibly such as Grecian / Dacian for reasons, later discussed here, suggested as that neo-pagans take such culture to colonise regions of past Christian heritage.
6.6 - The extensive close-ups of Susie in the back of the taxi as she gazes out at the rain and Black Forest—with passing pools of light that bathe her in greens and blues to transform her appearance, are all portentous.
6.7 - The clinking chimes and grumbles of voices of the strange film sound-track of the band: Goblins, are heard to invest a pending significance to the sequences, when such music is reminiscent of the chanting done during ritualistic sacrifice.
6.8 - Refer to the film still beneath of Susie in the taxi.
.jpeg)
6.9 - The protagonist, Susie, does later arrive at her intended destination: The Whale House at Freiburg, but it is an arrival fraught with distress.
6.10 - Susie encounters a distressed young woman and one of the school's dancers, Patricia, acted by Eva Axén, standing in the academy's door-way where Patricia yells out something unclearly at the time, as though she is herself a sign to the latest dance recruit to heed her next steps of entry in to the Tanz Akademie, or else she may become as frenzied and wild as Patricia; fed to the forest.
6.11 - Susie is much later able to remember Patricia's lip movements at the door-way, because in the taxi she could not hear Patricia, and deciphers Patricia's peculiar comment: "turn the blue iris."
6.12 - Patricia is seen to stumble away at one point with her hands in her tussled, hazel-coloured hair, when Susie at the portico is told through the intercom to "leave," essentially announcing a rejection of Susie by the academy.
6.13 - Susie gets back in the taxi that drives through the rainy night and Black Forest and, at one point, Patricia is seen to walk crazily through the forest trees, which is suggestive of Susie's own possible fate of being rejected by the academy and left to the darkness of the Black Forest.
+++
7.0 - (B) OVER-EDITED; THE TAXI SEQUENCE OF SUSPIRIA, CIRCA 1977, 99 MINUTES.
7.1 - Susie's induction to the world of the witch: Mother Suspirium at Freiburg is never finalised: the latter scenes of the taxi sequences are edited out or not directed.
7.2 - Thus, the taxi sequences are considered over-edited—on which point, compare filmic narration to the not dissimilar "music clip" direction that typically involves a form of heavily, poetically edited narrative as an evocation of dreamy surreality through which suspense is lost to the effect of weïrdness: in feature films, a balance must be achieved.
7.3 - The audience is left to contemplate the vague possibility of Susie finding accommodation late at night.
7.4 - Doubt creeps in as to whether Susie has befallen a similar fate as the many women who disappeared using taxis during the late 1970s and 1980s in Western Europe, North America and Oceania.
7.5 - Although now there is little available to report of such dark history: one exception is "Ireland's Vanishing Triangle", in which young women since the 1980s have disappeared in a region of Eastern Ireland, attributed to a group of serial killers, but as yet verified: refer to the "Ireland's Vanishing Triangle" website, accessed 22.03.2024, at URL: <https://www.irelandsvanishingtriangle.com/>.
7.6 - Overall, the taxi sequence is left without a directly expressed closure, amid a world that is unveiled by the film's introduction as stormy and ominous.
7.7 - It is assumed Susie is driven back in to town to stay at an inn, despite that such assumptions are difficult to make when demonstrations of madness are witnessed of current dance school students, such as Patricia.
7.8 - The explanation that many young women in Susie's place—having travelled far from their homes to attend the prestigious ballet school—were initially driven to: The Whale House only to be cruelly rejected and left to the caprices of the Black Forest, may emerge as a type of ritual connected to witch-craft and Satanism.
7.9 - In the contexts of a 1980s audience of Europe, the female contingency's fears are played upon by the film, while presumably the male component of the audience derive complicit amusement.
7.10 - It is questionable how many men would watch this film, and to add to the paradox, the film is directed by a man, Dario Argento, whose efforts to foreground such feminine culture from the shadows could only be considered productive of good.
+++
8.0 - "MONSTERS ARE NOT BORN, BUT CREATED".
8.1 - Patricia's narrative is unfolded instead of Susie's, to show Patricia has arrived at a friend's apartment where she advises her friend of her anxiety after her demonstrations of distress at The Whale House, but as to the reasons, no explanation by way of further narration is offered at that moment.
8.2 - In one of the apartment bed-rooms, a quite standard jump-scare of a window blowing open with curtains madly shaking around takes place.
8.3 - That is, the curtains have been blown back to reveal... Something of feminine anxiety.
8.4 - There exists a sub-culture of "the window" per se—with or without curtains—and in reference to women, and the spectre of monstrous femininity as the witch, for example, refer to the American film: The Witch In The Window, circa 2018, 77 minutes, directed by Andy Mitton.
8.5 - Women as typically defined by the domestic scene, exist much of their lives inside a house or apartment, specifically the bed-room, and rely on the window as an eye to the outside world.
8.6 - Many women have been imprisoned in a house for some mad reason by their fathers or mothers or family, to become monstrous in rage at the injustices of their domestic imprisonment.
8.7 - As is said: "monsters are not born, but created," as is exemplified by the text: Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus, circa 1818, by the British, female author: Mary Shelly (a recent edition being: 01 June 2018, Oxford World's Classics, Hard-cover, 304 pages, ISBN: 9780198814047, ISBN-10: 0198814046).
8.8 - The scene of the window blowing furiously open at Patricia could suggest she was imprisoned in her home, but such memories of those horrible times remain repressed to herself.
8.9 - Nonetheless, the character of Patricia and women of the film's audience, feel anxiety because repressed memories of trauma are provoked by signs reminiscent of the traumatic experience.
8.10 - Here the window that may have been curtained to blind the female prisoner of the outside world is blown open to signify the overwhelming nature of the outside world to women, who under Satanic régimes install in women a fear of politics and law-making.
8.1 - The house or school, viz. here, the dance academy, with secret passages and chambers, is itself symbolic of stored memories which may be kept secret by ways of repression despite the fact it is lived or worked in daily for years, thought to be completely familiar to its inhabitants.
8.12 - Might not consciousness be considered comparable, that is, despite the fact one's own head is lived in daily for years, there are secret passages and chambers yet familiar to even herself?
+++
9.0 - A FATAL SUBSTITUTION AND SACRIFICE.
9.1 - Minutes after speaking with her friend, Patricia is led to the apartment's roof only to be stabbed with a knife (by a masked man) then hung with a noose that lowers her through the apartment's sky-light.
9.2 - The stabbing is done to Patricia's stomach, such as to suggest she has been condemned for her diet or taste, or she has called her assailant "a stomach", that is, at some earlier point in the pre-narrated history of the text, or for some yet known reason.
9.3 - From a psychoanalytical approach the censored or edited-out scenes of Susie reaching a safe destination suggest the taxi driver took Susie elsewhere for some other purpose, regarding which supposedly requires censorship, that is, in a horror film in which all gruesome truths are meant to be told
9.4 - Thus the question is also asked: "exactly, how bad is it then?"
9.5 - The symbolic logic to be accepted is Patricia's death substituted for Susie's death, though Patricia is substituted for Sara as the friend who Susie confides in.
9.6 - Later Sara, acted by Stefania Casini, befalls a similar fate to Patricia, at least, manslaughter (upon whoever set the trap), as she flees from a murderer, steps in to a pit of razor wiring, such that further question is made to the symbolic lore of the filmic text.
9.7 - In the contexts of the taxi sequences, it may be that Sara's death permits for the admission of Susie in to the school which is a fatal substitution and something of a human sacrifice in the ritualistic sense.
+++
10.0 - "TURN THE BLUE IRIS".
10.1 - Imputed is the transgression of the rules of the coven regarding each of the young women.
10.2 - Patricia is thus murdered for giving away the secret to enter the secret passage ways of The Whale House: for her comment to: "turn the blue iris".
10.3 - Iris is both a reference to the multi-coloured flower that is a motif above the secret door of Madame Blanc's office, and further, to the Greek goddess Iris, the personification of the rainbow and similar to Hermés is a messenger of the gods, but is the female counter-part.
10.4 - Iris is the servant to the Olympians, particularly Queen Hera, the goddess of marriage, women and family, and the protector of women during child-birth.
10.5 - The witch, Mother Suspiria, is supposedly antagonistic to the domestic scene of Hera, and her coven members are inferred to declare those of Iris to be blue—that is of black, ethnic descent, an ethnicity that is conflated with cultural simplicity—who, in "being turned", convert to Satanic antagonism, gain entry to the coven's lair.
10.6 - Susie, then, is Iris who attempts to prevent the sacrifice, per the Grecian narratives of the 5th-century B.C. which focus on Iris as who is commanded to prevent sacrifice and as an effect rouses the satyrs' menace—refer to the mythology portrayed in fifteen black-and-red-figure vase painting: refer to Parody, Politics And The Populace In Greek Old Comedy, circa 2019, by Donald Sells, Bloomsbury Academic; ISBN 978-1-3500-6051-7.
10.7 - Where some of the Iris-based narrative is edited-out of Dario Argento's film, other narrative parts are included, such as, Susie as Iris finds Sara's cadaver, possibly the meat of sacrifice associated to the harpies; while of ancient Grecian myth and fabulous, the witches as cannabalistic harpies is an horrorific consideration that seems to disappear when Sara's body vanishes upon Mother Suspiria's death, caused by Susie who thrusts a spear in to the old woman's throat.
10.8 - In reference to another vase, Iris is sister of the harpies named (A) to (C):
(A) Aello / stormy;
(B) Ocypete / swift-winged;
(C) Celæno / the dark, who is included as a third sister by the poet Virgil in Æneid 3.209.
10.9 - Each of the harpies could be considered proto-typically the three mothers of Argento Dario's filmic Mothers Trilogy: Mater Suspiria, Mater Tenebrarum in Inferno, circa 1980 and Mater Lachrymarum, in Mother Of Tears, circa 2007,
10.10 - On the vase's other side, the satyrs attack Hera who stands between Hermès and Heracles: refer to pages 627–628, Reconstructing Satyr Drama, 5 July 2021 by Andreas P. Antonopoulos; Menelaos M. Christopoulos and George W.M. Harrison; De Gruyter; ISBN 9783110725216.
+++
11.0 - THE TAXI-DRIVER AS SATYR.
11.1 - In further reference to satyrs as taxi-men, or as the guardians of the sacrificial altar of Dionysius, there is a man-servant, Pavlo, acted by Giuseppe Transocchi, who rouses to kill Susie when Susie discovers the cadaver of Sara, viz. the meat offering, but Pavlo is portrayed more a possessed goon than satyr.
11.2 - Rather it is the cabbie of the initial taxi sequences who may be the humanoid satyr.
11.3 - A satyr with the hind legs of a horse or goat was thought to move quickly, such as a taxi vehicle, but in this film the role of the taxi-man as satyr is avoided explicit expression due to the actual occurrences of taxi-men abducting and murdering women.
11.4 - Supposedly, there was a cultural problem regarding Eurasian, male taxi drivers in the Western World to take directions or orders, albeit paid, from women—the murders of mostly Christian women by taxi drivers were thought to be religiously motivated, that is, by Christaphobia.
11.5 - The leader of the satyrs "Silenus" works by subtraction: Silenus is only evident by what is removed, viz. subtracted, often to refer to a killing, as opposed to what is added or contributed: his only, most literal "additions" are made by fertilizing women at which point his creativity stops.
11.6 - Silenus appears to be that very taxi-man character, acted by Fulvio Mingozzi, born 6 October 1925 at Lagosanto, Italy, and died 19 September 2000 at Rome, Italy, of the taxi sequences which start the film: Suspiria, circa 1977, 99 minutes.
11.7 - Refer to the film still beneath showing Fulvio Mingozzi as the taxi-man of Suspiria, circa 1977.
11.8 - Fulvio Mingozzi's wizened, leathery complexion certainly lends itself to fit the description of a satyr, at least the upper half, and possibly for this reason Dario Argento has placed Fulvio Mingozzi in many of his films.
11.9 - Notably Fulvio Mingozzi is in Dario Argento's filmic debút: The Bird With The Crystal Plumage / Italian: L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo, circa 1970, that narrates of an American writer who, while visiting Rome, witnesses a murder by a serial killer, acted by Fulvio Mingozzi, targeting young women, and the writer attempts to uncover the murderer's identity before he becomes the next victim: a return of the satyr attacking Iris or Hera.
+++
12.0 - THE BIRD CONNECTION.
12.1 - Acknowledge, the connections between The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, circa 1970, and Suspiria, circa 1977, include not only Fulvio Mingozzi, but the same "crystal peacock" statue of the circa 1977 film, that is also found in the theatrical release poster for: The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, circa 1970.
12.2 - Beneath, the film still from Suspiria, circa 1977, showing Susie Bannion next to the bird statue that is revealed to her within Mother Suspiria's bed-room.
.jpeg)
12.3 - Beneath is the illustration of the crystal-type bird statue in the circa 1970 theatrical release poster.
12.4 - The "bird with the crystal plumage" is referred to in the circa 1970 film as "a rare bird from the South Caucasus", held within the Roman zoo near to the Ranieri couple's apartment, but the species of bird is not identified.
12.5 - The bird may be the Grey Crowned Crane: the emblematic bird of Uganda due to similarities of its appearance to the statue in Suspiria, circa 1977 and the poster illustration for The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, circa 1970.
12.6 - Further, the reference is to be considered an allusion to the mystical qualities thought to endow the rock: crystal, such that a crystal bird, to configure the semiotics of: bird = flight AND crystal = psychic } both = "flight of the imagination" or "astral projection".
12.7 - The gruesome scene, in which the blind piano player of the Tanz Akademie, viz. Daniel, acted by Flavio Bucci, is bizarrely attacked by his own German Shepherd guide-dog at Konigsplatz Square, Munich, that shows a Phoenix with flame-like carvings in stone relief at the apex of one of the building's typanaums, such as to suggest a correlation between the witches' spells, Konigsplatz Square and the killing of the blind man.
.jpeg)
12.8 - Birds have become generally considered symbolic of the feminine, and in that context the films' allusions to birds are to the female witches who have been connected in these notes to the half-human, half-bird harpies, and further related to Iris, who is portrayed herself as winged—albeit Iris, similar to Hermés, is comparable to the form of an angel.
12.9 - Aristophanes's comedy The Birds, 414 B.C., Athens, involves Iris representing the gods, flying to the sky-city of the birds to greet them, only to be ridiculed and threatened with rape by their leader Pisetærus, an elderly Athenian man—Pisetærus tells her the birds are the gods now, the deities to whom the humans must sacrifice.
+++
13.0 - PROTO-SATANIC, NEO-PAGAN FOLK-LORISM.
13.1 - Witches are mostly evil; only a few are good, "white witches", and Dario Argento's filmic Mother's Trilogy involves the macabre, where macabre is used to evoke allusions of a proto-Satanic, Turkish / Eastern European or Asiatic culture of neo-pagan folk-lore.
13.2 - Iris has a connection to the harpies that are, while of the Grecian / Dacian neo-pagan mythic, invariably Satanic, because of their association with Hell—known as Tatarus—because the harpies were known to carry-off the daughters of King Pandareus to torture them on their way to Tartarus where they were given as servants to the Erinyes: refer to Homer's Odyssey 20.78.
13.3 - The indication is Grecian / Dacian mythological neo-paganism as it may be practiced contemporarily involves different divisions within the neo-pagan, such as the often asinine folk-lorist division to include every-day superstitions, which, in some respects could be interpreted as Satanic, or simply of a different religious focus to Christianity, that is, pending the rituals and symbolism involved.
13.4 - Regarding the some-what muted symbolism of the satyr(s) in Suspiria, circa 1977, to further apply the psychoanalytical approach, the muted, censored and emptied-out allusions to the satyrs of the Iris narrative, rather than being considered as dimming their significance, magnifies it—particularly in the context of the horror genre text.
13.5 - In ancient Greek culture satyrs were tricksters, hubristic boasters, or debauched revellers, and Dionysian soldiers / legion, not necessarily with goats' hind-legs, but human in form except for a horse's or goat's tail.
13.6 - The iconography of satyrs are said to have gradually become associated with the god of Pan, regularly depicted with the legs and horns of a goat which is used in Christian depictions of Satan.
13.7 - The possibility of a proto-Satanic, Grecian / Dacian neo-paganism as informing the portrayal of the modern in Suspiria, circa 1977, is then open for serious argumentation.
13.8 - One counter-point of possible closure to that argument is the absence of Christian iconography in the film, which would have been prevalent throughout the Baden-Württemberg, German State—that is, because of the rule of symbolic binarism, the Satanic depends on an antagonism to Christianity: without Christianity, Satanism loses its definition and its traditions possibly regress in to cultish forms of neo-paganism.
13.9 - There is particularly relevant Christian iconography at the region of Freiburg, such as Freiburg's impressive, mediæval Minster / Cathedral of circa 1200 A.D., where a Christian parable in the inner portal expressed through sculptures of the ten virgins, viz. of "The Parable Of The Wise And Foolish Virgins" which similar to the film, speaks of traditions associated to girls and women.
13.10 - Regarding the parable—refer to Matthew 25:1–13: of the ten virgins, five were wise; five were foolish—throughout Europe sculptures of "The Wise And Foolish Virgins" were ubiquitous in church architecture, and continue to be found on many structures, such as: Amiens Cathedral; Auxerre Cathedral; Laon Cathedral; Notre Dame de Paris; Cathedral of Notre-Dame; Reims Strasbourg Cathedral; Erfurt Cathedral; Magdeburg Cathedral; many churches of Switzerland and Scotland; churches of Eastern Europe, viz. the portal leading in to the main church of Hovhannavank (Saint John) of Armenia, circa 1216 – circa 1221, that has carved scenes from the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins.
13.11 - Beneath is a photograph of The Wise And Foolish Virgins at Magdeburg Cathedral's Paradise Door: not shown in the film, but is of the Christian German culture.
13.12 - Further, The Wise And Foolish Virgins
formed the basis of a hymn: Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme by Philipp Nicolai, which Johann Sebastian Bach used for his chorale cantata: Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV.140, that is used as music for a one-act ballet titled: The Wise Virgins, circa 1941, by William Walton, with choreography by Frederick Ashton, such that there is indicated at least an indirect association to Suspiria, circa 1977, a film that involves a narrative of ballet dancers in a once-Christian school and in a once singly Christian region of old Christendom, Western Europe.
13.14 - An argument could be averred, that the film portrays a post-modern supplanting of the Christian traditions native to the people and lands of Western Germany, in which case the usurpation of Christianity is a Satanic task itself.
+++
14.0 - THE POST-MODERN ART DIRECTION OF SUSPIRIA, CIRCA 1977, 99 MINUTES.
14.1 - "The Whale House" in the past was made up of 17 separate buildings, now one house complex, opens on to the Franziskanerstraße, with the rear on the Gauchstraße, near Kartoffelmarkt square, that is named as such due to a reference to the biblical narrative of Jonah And The Whale.
14.2 - Further, the large house, that is the academy, next to its great gate, was residence to the Christian Humanist, Erasmus of Rotterdam, 28 October 1466 – 12 July 1536, as is shown at the start of the film in reference to a plaque near the house's front portico that commemorates Erasmus of Rotterdam, but the reference to the celebrated Christian scholar is arcane.
14.3 - The house contains stained glass windows but without Christian decorations set within them, to indicate of the intricate Christian designs' removal, with a plain single-coloured substitute.
14.4 - The tomato-red colouring of the house makes the building almost alarming during the taxi sequences, to add to the filmic suspense because the colour red may symbolize the redness of blood and be a warning.
14.5 - A further space shown in the film is of Patricia's friend's apartment, of a geometric, possibly Arabic patterning: the sky-light glass that breaks and falls in shards to kill Patricia's friend beneath is of bold, geometric forms.
14.6 - It can be seen that the iconographic de-identification of such formerly Christian architecture is part of the "Pop aesthetic" of modernity that itself is derivative of the sensational or thrilling of aesthetics associated with the use of opium, the "pop" of the opium poppy—on which point Dario Argento's Mother Trilogy films are noted as partially based on the famed opium-user Thomas de Quincey's Suspiria de profundis / Latin: "sighs from the depths", circa 1845, a collection of several essays in the form of prose poems.
14.7 - Neo-classicism emerges as a type of post-modern triumph such as in reference to Greco-Roman statues which act as pots for plants in the main hall of the academy; arch-ways per se and with classical proportions found in Patricia's friend's apartment that are set against mystical geometry: the esoteric symbolism, presented in the film, needs only be decoded out of the neutrality of neo-classicism.
14.8 - Refer to a still from the film Suspiria, circa 1977 of Patricia's friend's apartment beneath.
14.9 - The real "trick of the eye" is in reference to a door that is painted as part of the mural with many doors in Madame Blanc's office: the correct door opens when a blue iris, part of the room decoration, is manually turned by hand.
14.10 - The secret entrance is covered by blue velvet curtains behind which there is a passage way of black and gold painted walls inscribed in Latin and Hebrew phrases, that lead to a number of secret rooms, where the coven and its head witch are kept concealed.
14.11 - Refer beneath to the film still from Suspiria, circa 1977, where Susie walks down the decorated secret hallway of The Whale House.
.jpeg)
14.12 - To an extent the openly lived lives of the women are de-identified by modern, simple geometric forms of non-religious significance, that is contrasted to the secret lives of the women whose secret spaces are goldly ornate and evocative of paganism and, or, or the Satanic.
+++
