Portrait of the Artist's Mother and Fruitful Circularity

Arrangement in Grey and Black: the Artist's Mother, James Abbot

 McNeill Whistler, 1871, Musee d'Orsay, Paris, France.

Even my dad knows this painting, so that officially makes it incredibly famous. James Abbott McNeill Whistler technically entitled it Arrangement in Grey and Black: it is first and foremost, the paying off of a debt. Who would remember, who would know, this woman, if the son to whom she had given birth, had not painted it? And how could he have painted it if she had not given birth to him? This painting then, becomes a work of “fruitful circularity,” in which the mother and her son give life to one another: she gives birth to him and he uses his talent to give her (temporal) immortality in the world of art. It is both a celebration of motherhood and a celebration of art.

There are some important traits about this particular painting: she’s in half profile, so, symbolically, we are seeing only half of her. I think this is part of the genius of Whistler, that he knew the inherent limitations of portraiture, but instead of being held back by them (or avoiding the genre altogether) he studied it and used it to his advantage.

Arrangement in Gray: Portrait of the Painter,

c. 1872, Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan.

In Self-Portrait, Whistler is showing only half of himself: the half of him who is an artist. Although the painting is in three-quarters profile, he is still hiding a part of himself; the encircled, tiny dragonfly (on the brown wall, in between his hand with the brushes and his chest), was Whistler’s monogram, so not only is he showing us only a part of himself, he is showing us only his social persona as an artist and, at the same time, showing us that this is all art can really do.

Yet, in the portrait of his mother, he also demonstrates how—knowing art’s limitations—they can be exploited to release it’s own knowledge.

The curtain on the left side is highly symbolic: whenever a curtain appears in art, it symbolizes that something is begin hidden or revealed; in this portrait, since it hangs down and covers something up, it is hiding something, something about Anna, Whistler’s mother.  The curtain on the side of the painting, literally, in the margin, suggests that she, too, has pushed all that information of herself off to the side, into the margins of her being. The “decorative” pattern (and a pattern is never, ever “just decorative,”) has a bit of the whimsical, even a bit of “wildness” in its arrangement of “swirling” lines contrasting most effectively with the overall horizontals of the rest of the portrait, suggesting that she might have been a bit wild in her earlier years, or, at least, Whistler suspects it was so. (In contrast, the portrait of Thomas Carlyle below, instead of employing a curtain again, Whistler drapes Carlyle's hat and coat over his knee, to "cover up" something about Carlyle, the part of him no one can ever know).

Similarly, on the right side of the canvas, only the framed matting of another picture; we can only deduce what might have been within that frame, but, so, too, Whistler could only deduce that part of his mother’s life, her heart, her very soul; and this is the great paradox of the painting. The woman who gave birth to him, raised and nurtured him, is so unknown to him, so shrouded in a holy mystery of un-know-able-ness and yet it exists in a harmony of beautiful music and balance, soothing, not irritating. Likewise, in the Thomas Carlyle portrait below, there are two framed prints, fully visible to the viewer, which may be referencing the extensive writings of Thomas Carlyle but Whistler intentionally made the prints "un-see-able," i.e., what we think we see of Carlyle in his writings is really but a blur.

Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 2: Portrait of Thomas Carlyle,

1872-3, Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland. After seeing the

portrait of Whistler's mother, writer Thomas Carlyle approved of the

simplicity of the painting and wanted his friend to do one of himself

as well. And so he did.

But what can we know about her, about Anna Whistler? In the framed picture to the left of Anna, is a building on a riverbank; perhaps the place she grew up or was in someway dear to her. Her chair sets squarely on the floor, a sign that she, too, was solid and wouldn’t “rock back and forth” on issues. Her legs are up on a small bench; the real medicinal reason may have been poor circulation was taking over, but Whistler, the demanding artist, would not have absently permitted such a pose if it were not meaningful. If the bench indicates poor circulation in her legs, it symbolizes her will is dying and being cut off, either from depression or a holy resignation to Divine Will. The stylish white cap atop her head, signifies that she’s a woman of faith (the head symbolizes what governs us and white indicates faith), re-enforced by the white handkerchief: her hands show us her strength, and that they both hold onto the white cloth also relays that her strength comes from the Lord. (Compare this to the “dirtied” white smock Whistler wears in his self-portrait: he soils his faith by his profession and even “covers it up” at times with the brown [read: “stain”] of sin).

Demonstrating the popularity of Whistler's Mother, American

painter Thomas Eakins portrayed Frank Jay St. John in 1900

in a similar pose. Note the more "lavish" rug resting beneath

St. John in Eakins' portrayal, suggesting the importance of

the rug within the overall composition, contrasted to the

simple rug in Whistler's Mother.

Lastly, the threadbare rug upon which her chair sets appears to not only be well-worn, but stained, perhaps a sign of poverty over which she was victorious (because she is on top of it, it’s not lorded over her).

U.S. postage stamp of 1934 honoring mothers and Whistler's mother.

To conclude, Whistler’s portrait of his mother is not extraordinary for what he shows us, rather, what he shows us that he can’t show us, i.e., the boundaries of art in the great mystery of our personhood, especially the mystery of our own parents, who gave birth to us, and yet, how much we do not and cannot know of them; the same being true for those who, in their own turn, are parents and being able to know the children to whom they have given birth, and the great mystery of Life guiding them. I have just barely started to discuss the great qualities of the painting, just as Whistler had barely begun to realize his mother, putting her into a “real” context of personhood and mystery, without compromising her, either.

Nighthawks and Other Predators

Nighthawks, Edward Hopper, 1942, Art Institute of Chicago.

Like Grant Wood’s American Gothic, Edward Hopper’s 1942 painting Nighthawks is widely parodied:  it is common to see James Dean, Humphrey Bogart, Elvis and Marilyn Monroe “acting” out the parts of the unnamed people sitting in the diner.  The reason those parodies “are successful,” why they are able to communicate to the viewer, is because the viewer is able to quickly understand the “state of being” Hopper’s Nighthawks invokes.

Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Nighthawks parody.

By the light showing on the buildings across the street from the diner wherein the customers sit, we know it’s dawn and they have been there all night (or most of the night), and none of them show any sign of leaving. 

It was 1942 and America was in World War II, the entire country anxious about what would happen.  The three men are not in the war; the woman doesn’t appear to be getting ready to go to work, so perhaps it is Saturday morning… or Sunday morning? The woman’s red dress suggests they had been out for Saturday evening date (it doesn’t appear she is wearing a wedding ring) and if it is Sunday morning, it’s time for church and the street is deserted.  Hopper was raised in a strict Baptist home so we know that he knew the holiness of the Sabbath; do the diners? Has this diner replaced the church, the way the farm replaced the church in Grant Wood’s American Gothic (please see my post, American Gothic, American Theology)?

Supposedly, she is eating a sandwich, but I don't see one.

To begin with, it’s a diner but no one is eating anything (not that I can see although other scholarly research validates that she is eating a sandwich and the men drinking coffee).  There is an add for Phillies cigars on the sign above the diner; "Phillies" implies "fills" but it's obvious that no one in the diner is "filled" because they are lingering, as the title Nighthawks implies (being the Nighthawk family of birds). In art, whether food or drink, when someone partakes of something, it relates both a willingness to accept what is being given or a communion in “the breaking of bread.”  Eating “together” has always been one of the most primal instincts of a group activity for humans, and so when that is absent where it should be present, it’s a sign of the downfall of civilization because it’s the detachment of humans from other humans.

Common Nighthawk bird.

One is overcome with the great emptiness of the painting: the diner is mostly empty (note all the empty seats) the street is empty, the shops across the street are empty, the apartment windows are empty…the walls of the diner are empty, there is no décor or signs, it is utterly bare. Hopper started the painting the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor so Nighthawks was his canvas for his thoughts, feelings and observations for the War America was now a part of. But there is no entry into the diner, there is no way to enter into their space.What I find so interesting is the common, scholarly notation that there is no exit for the customers in the diner; the bright, yellow door is the kitchen door, which seems to be on the wrong side of the counter for the soda jerk if he wants a direct route to the kitchen from where he's serving.

Sartre's 1944 play No Exit.

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote his famous play of hell, No Exit, in 1944, two years after Hopper's painting entered the Art Institute of Chicago. The famous quote, "Hell is other people," (and that there is no exit to the diner) seemingly fits Hopper's painting but, surprisingly, it seems like they are somehow avoiding hell by being with other people. While they all seem lonely, unlike the philosophy of Existentialism gaining in popularity at this time period, Hopper offers this hopeful note that hell is not other people, but of not being around other people. But that is perhaps just prolonging the death which seems to be creeping upon them, the way the flourescent light of the diner attempts at drowning out the darkness that will come again.

An aspect of the painting which seems to escape observation are the two dispensers in the corner of the diner, next to the yellow door; they sit there, just as the man and the woman. If you are what you eat, the man and the woman will end up being like the two coffee dispensers, a type of still-life self-portrait of their on-coming doom. The other observation is the absence of observation: there is glass all around the four people and, yet, there are no reflections anywhere within the painting. Whereas there should be reflections symbolic of the deep, inner-reflecting of the four people locked up within the diner, there is no reflection, and that's where the other predators come in.

Edward Hopper, Self-Portrait, Whitney Museum of Art, 1906.

So far, we have extreme lonliness, emptiness, Sunday morning (possibly) with no one going to church, no one partaking of a communal gathering, the absence of reflecting, sprialing within one's self when there is no anchor. It could be the result of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the entry into the War America thought it might escape, or it is the natural result of all our industrialization, the long Depression, our general lack of reflection on life even while they appear to be in a state of reflection, or our desire to always be "filled."

Vincent van Gogh, The Night Cafe, 1886, Yale University Art

Gallery. Hopper incorporates the reds and greens, the glaring yellow and

the dispersed, alienated customers of van Gogh's painting into his own,

accentuating by his more subdued color choice and tighter brush work

a more "encroaching" death of the soul than van Gogh's very hostile cafe.

Edward Hopper's Nighhawks offers a vehicle for remebering Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Elvis and Humphrey Bogart, not because they were famous and died too young, or didn't live out all of their dreams, but because they played roles which helped us to realize our dreams; they helped to validate our own lonliness and fears, our hopes and joys, our disappointments and dreams. Placing them within the iconic diner of Nighthawks communicates to us to hold onto what is most human within us, and to stay in community; by accomplishing this, we keep the predators at bay.

Inception: Power, Revenge and Frustrated Staircases

Viewers tend to focus on the toy top left spinning at the very end of the film, and trying to decide whether or not Dom (Leonardo DiCaprio) is lost in limbo; what's more important about the toy top is that it's upside down; the top, is the bottom, and the bottom, the top. Obviously, Ariadne (Ellen Page) in Christopher Nolan's 2010 Inception, invokes the ancient Greek myth; but what's not so obvious is the way Nolan "perverts" it. "Perversion" is a very handy word to know in art because it literally means "turn upside down," (in terms of sexuality it means taking something that should not be used sexually and making it sexual). Nolan's entire film is a perversion of the original Greek myth.

A Hindu or Indian form of labyrinth with a spiral in its center very similar
to the third example of a maze which Ariadne draws for Dom in Inception.

In the original myth, the Athenian hero Theseus goes to the island of Crete to settle an old score between the Cretens and Athenians by slaying the Minotaur within the labyrinth. When he arrives, Ariadne, the daughter of Cretan King Minos, falls in love with Theseus and gives him a thread so that, after he slays the Minotaur, he will be able to find his way out again; in exchange for the thread, Ariadne makes Theseus promise to marry her, which he agrees to. After slaying the Minotaur and finding his way out, Theseus, Ariadne and the other Athenians, sail from Crete but Theseus abandons Ariadne on the island of Naxos, while she is asleep. The god Dionysus later comes and claims Ariadne as his bride. By giving this character the name "Ariadne," knowledge of the myth means knowledge of her: her motivations, her vulnerability and even, her destiny.

Theseus slaying the Minotaur.

In Nolan's film, Dom assembles a team to do the "inception" job, which he has to do or Saito (Ken Watanabe) will kill them for botching an earlier job. Going to his father-in-law Miles (Michael Caine) he meets Ariadne who is an even better architect than himself. Dom takes her into a dream to get her familiar with what they are going to be doing, and then she does something "impressive"...

The most important moment in

the film in the background of the poster.

She pulls up the road and literally perverts it, she turns the dreamscape city upside-down (which is in the theatrical poster above) then opens "mirrored" doorways while closing others, leading the way through.

Construction of Xanadu, Charles Kane's

luxurious prison from Citizen Kane.

As they stand looking at themselves in a "infinite reflection" in a mirrored wall Ariadne has created, Nolan invokes the 1941 film Citizen Kane when Kane (Orson Welles) stands in a wall-size mirror in his palace Xanadu and creates an infinite reflection of himself: just as Xanadu is a pleasurable prison for Kane to spend the rest of his days as an old man full of regrets, Adriane does the same thing for Dom. She has completely altered the "structure" of the dream and by aggressively taking over what Dom had created originally, she is now the architect. From that moment on, for the rest of the film, it's Ariadne's dream and Dom can't escape.

How deeply must he go to find "the real" Kane?

(Likewise, Kane refers back to the toy sleigh of his childhood, "Rosebud," while Dom refers back to a child's toy of a spinning top; Kane longs to get back into the idyllic childhood, whereas Dom longs to get back to the idyllic reality of his children). The "infinite reflection" into which Ariadne and Dom stare reflects the infinite depths of a dreamworld that Ariadne will create to entrap Dom,. . . because this is a film of mazes.

Opening Dom's safe and taking control.

In the myth, Ariadne gives Theseus a thread to help him find his way out; in the film, she alters the landscape and cityscape so that he can't find his way out. Mal is the Minotaur (because "mal" means "bad or evil," such as "malevolent" or "maleficent"), and instead of being a hideous male beast, in the film, it's a beautiful woman; Theseus wants to kill the Minotaur, but Dom doesn't want Mal to die; Ariadne is left asleep on Naxos, but she leaves Dom asleep in the water.

A labyrinth with death at the center;

from the de Medici collection, Florence.

In the original myth, the Minotaur's Labyrinth belonged to Ariadne (she was known as the "Mistress of the Labyrinth") but the original dream in the film belongs to Dom, which Ariadne takes over as her own. Theseus wants to escape the maze, Dom doesn''t want to escape the dream because his children are there. How do we know, at this point, that Dom is still locked within the dream? Michael Caine, who plays Miles in the film, explains his interpretation of the end of the film as, "If I'm there it's real, because I'm never in the dream. I'm the guy who invented the dream."

The face of the new Minotaur, Marion Cotillard.

Yet, with all due respect, Mr. Caine is ignoring that, if this is Ariadne's dream, Miles is in essence "her father" as well because he gave birth to her as an architect and, since he was the one who "brought" Ariadne and Dom together, there is every reason why Ariadne would place Miles in the dream: Miles would be a part of Ariadne's unconscious just as he is part of Dom's. Similarly, since we have never seen the faces of Dom's children--we have no objective reference for them--these are actually Ariadne's children because they are born of her imagination. (Consider how Eames, the forger, makes himself into a beautiful woman to distract Fischer, this is the same strategy Ariadne uses for Dom's children, they are forgeries). 

When Dom and Ariadne are walking after she has turned everything upside down, Dom tells her, "Never create from memory"; but she's lying when she says she created it from her memory, she's creating from Dom's memory, the memory she has stolen from him the same way he steals from others. Everything she does is to "tease out" what is inside of him so that she can trap him, instead of leading him to safety. The question is, why would should do this to Dom, someone she has just met?

Revenge.

When Dom and Ariadne sit in the cafe, and he tells her they are in a dream, everything begins to explode. She has been raped. Dom has gone into her (subconscious) and she doesn't like it one bit, and the devastation of the area where they are, validates that she, herself, has been devastated.

The top has been turned upside down.

On Ariadne's chessboard.

This is a very complex film, so I am just hitting on the high spots. But, in short, Dom isn't lost in limbo, he's lost in Ariadne's Labyrinth.

Let's quickly examine some ways to determine who is in control. Ariadne is obsessed with Dom and his inner-life: all she talks to him about is how out of control he is over Mal and what is going on so she can gain access to his secrets. By keeping Dom's attention focused on Mal, Dom loses sight of what Ariadne is doing to him just as Ariadne lost sight of how Dom brought her into a dream at the cafe that explodes. Shortly after Ariadne has turned the dream city upside down, Mal appears and stabs Ariadne. If this is Ariadne's dream, why on earth would she inflict that on herself? Ariadne wants to bring out the "malicious" in Mal so Dom will focus his attention on Mal instead of becoming alerted to Ariadne's control; it's the same thing Dom (thinks) he's doing to Fischer by telling Fischer he is Mr. Charles and is there to help him instead of letting him figure out that he is there to invade him; Dom, as Mr. Charles, doesn't want Fischer to know who the real enemy is, and Ariadne wants Dom to think he has to get control away from Mal, not from Ariadne.

Everyone is perverse in this film.

Ariadne has staged her own "inception" in Dom's mind of convincing him one, that he's out of control with his emotions; two, that Mal trying to wrestle control from Dom (instead of letting Dom know Ariadne is wrestling control from him) and thirdly, that the inception job for Fisher is working (remember, the whole heist is Ariadne's dream so she's the one pulling it all off and she's doing it to keep Dom distracted the way Dom was distracting Saito in his dream). If Dom begins suspecting that Ariadne is in control, she won't be able to finish getting her revenge, so she plays it out to lead him deeper and deeper into a maze. Keeping all this going on keeps Dom's unconscious sleeping to who is the one actually in control. And there is a fourth reason: she wants a job placement. When Miles introduces Dom and Ariadne, she asks him if he has a job placement for her; she wants that as badly as Dom wants a way home. (This was in 2010, how many college students are concerned about finding jobs? Like, all of them).

Without the small ring, it looks like Dom's wedding ring he doesn't take off.

Let's consider the totems briefly. We know that Arthur has a loaded die, and he is the only one who knows which side it will always fall on; Ariadne's is a chess piece, that we know nothing about, but it's a sign that she's playing games; there is nothing special about Dom's top, i.e., it's not loaded, it doesn't change colors, there is nothing "unpredictable" about it that only Dom knows.

A bad totem.

It's easy to forge, and I would like to suggest that's exactly what Ariadne does, and anytime it looks like he's checking reality, she's tricking him. You never see any of the other characters checking their totems, you never see Arthur throw his die or Ariadne... doing what her chess piece should do... Dom has a bad totem because he has no check on reality he can depend on. 

The Ring of O, which the above ring is modeled on, featuring a maze.

These are "power plays" Ariadne makes against Dom and "power" has important role in this film. Dom, stands for Dirty Old Man in BDSM; if you think this is a stretch, remember, when you say "Saito," (Watanbe's character) is sounds like "sado" for sado-masochism. Our dreams contain our most vulnerable selves, that's the point of Dom's security, is to protect or exploit dreams to get what he wants. In sado-masochism, the "bottom" is known as the person who gives up control, and the "top" is the person who takes control; the person who willingly takes on either role is known as a "switch." When Ariadne turns the dream world upside-down, she is literally reversing or switching their roles, and this refers to her "repressed sexuality." This comes up when Mal confronts her and asks her, "Have you ever been a lover?" and little Ariadne says, "No." In Greek, "Ariadne" means "utterly pure," but in Inception, Nolan perverts that to  mean "utterly perverse." The wedding ring Dom wears resembles the Ring of O above; the above ring is modeled on the second ring which contains a maze and is a symbol worn by those practicing BDSM throughout Europe so they can be identified. Why would Nolan incorporate these elements into his story? Control: sado-masochism and BDSM is all about control, and in the most fragile environment of the dream, you have to have control.

Dream a little bigger, darling.

To continue the thesis that the movie is perverted, in the original myth, Dionysus--the god of the wine harvest and of ritual madness--finds Ariadne on Naxos and claims her as his bride. In Inception, Dom brings them Arthur and Ariadne together, and Arthur is hardly a god of ritual madness, rather, Eames mocks him for being so uptight and not having any madness about him.

The bed is right there in plain sight.

According to Sigmund Freud, one of the symbols in dreams used to identify the sexual act is the going up and down of staircases; in Inception, Ariadne and Arthur go up and down the Penrose Stairs, an impossible object, but when translated into an expression of sexuality, becomes the perpetual act of delaying the sexual  act, because it never climaxes at the top. Why Ariadne desires Arthur, because she has no sexual experience and because of her "rape" by Dom (in the cafe where everything becomes devastated) she wants a relationship with Arthur, but not one that will end up like Dom and Mal.



A model of the optical illusion Penrose Stairs used in Inception.

If the Penrose Steps are a symbol of repressed sexuality, then Ariadne is fulfilling a wish of not fulfilling the sexual act. In the hotel room, Mal asks her if she has ever been a lover, and she says no, and she never will be; this manifests her desire for control, to have Arthur as a non-threatening lover, to entrap Dom who threatened her and to successfully pull off a major inception all on her own.

Bacchus (Dionysus) and Ariadne on Naxos by Titian.

If I am correct, and the perversion of the original Greek myth is a plausible reading of the film, then the relationship with Arthur and Ariadne continues the perversion: whereas Dionysus finds Ariadne abandoned on an island, Dom introduces them--supposedly in a building; whereas Dionysus claims Ariadne as his bride, in Inception, Ariadne (because she's the one in control in the dream) really claims Arthur by dreaming him into wanting him to kiss her. And, last but not least, whereas in the myth, Ariadne and Dionysus are married, in Inception, there is nothing but the Penrose Stairs and the perpetual "delaying" of the consummation.

Sleeping Ariadne, Vatican Collection, Roman marble.

In conclusion, Ariadne pursued Theseus in the original myth, and trapped him into a pledge of marriage so he wouldn't become entrapped in the maze; in Inception, Dom finds Ariadne, traps her in a dream, rapes/invades her subconscious, then she traps him and destroys his unconscious the way he tried to destroy hers. The film is about power and control, about revenge and the attempt at hiding within your dream even as the dream is supposed to reveal. 

Conan the Pagan

My Uncle Gene likes to say, “God created man in His own image and man has been trying to return the favor ever since.” The makers of Conan the Barbarian really try to accomplish that.

Throughout the film, but especially the first five minutes, symbols traditionally associated with Christianity and the Catholic Church are demonized. The priests who “ruled” over the people were obsessed with “secrets of resurrection” and “human sacrifice.” There is a mask the priest wears to become “a god” but it has to be filled with blood. When the priest wears this mask, it wraps around his head, like the legs of an octopus and becomes a part of him. Virgins are sacrificed to the gods. The barbarian tribes, disgusted with the way they were being treated, revolted against the priests, took the mask and shattered it into pieces, with each tribe of barbarians taking a piece and vowing not to allow themselves, or the mask, to be re-united again.  The plot of the film is the “villain’s” attempt at putting the mask back together, then resurrecting his wife who was burned to death at the stake.

Why would a barbarian be "resurrected?"

So, what does this mean?

The secrets of resurrection invoke Jesus and His Divine Resurrection; the human sacrifice offered is the Divine Sacrifice of the Mass. The virgins are men and woman who “sacrifice” themselves to celibacy and chastity for the sake of their vocation (there are lots of naked women in this film, seeing all that bare flesh really emphasizes how unchaste the writer advocates men and women being). The tribes that revolt are various secular denominations that break away from the Church’s teachings and refuse to be reconciled (such as homosexuals, pro-choice groups, radical political groups, etc.). The mask is the most important symbol because it represents the mystery of the priesthood. A mask symbolizes “putting on the new man,” leaving the old ways of sin and becoming the “man born again” in the image of God. When a man becomes a priest, he gains that power to be a priest by virtue of the Blood of Christ and the Sacrifice of Cavalry.

Tiny picture of Ron Perlman has

Conan's father just before the

future wrecker of civilization is

born during a bloody battle.

The Barbarian tribes revolt against the priest having this power over them and that is symbolized by Conan’s own birth: his pregnant mother fights during a battle, is stabbed in the stomach and gives birth to Conan in the blood and mud. The battle being waged is the war of Good and Evil; the mother being stabbed in the stomach is “death to the appetites” and passions in which Conan was conceived; the blood of the people dying represents the absence of the Blood of Christ who died for their sins and their eternal death because they won’t embrace Christ; the mud represents the stains of sin. The writer makes this chaos of evil into which Conan was born an absolute secular virtue and by virtue of being “free of all signs of salvation,” he is the champion of all the above named groups who make Christ their enemy. At some point in the film, when Conan says, "No one should live in chains," he is referring to the "chains" of the Ten Commandments and the teachings of the Church because they attempt to "discipline" the appetites which run wild throughout the film.

The original barbarian, "Ah-nold."

Another example of this bizarre symbolism is the Witch Marique (Rose McGowan), the daughter of Khalar Zym who is trying to get the mask and bring his wife (the Church) back to life. She literally has been twisted to represent Christians: she’s a witch because of the prosecution of the Salem Witch Trials. (My dad told me once that, when a farm dog kills a chicken, the only way to break him of it was to take the chicken and tie it around his neck so he won’t do it again; that is what Conan the Barbarian is doing by tying Christians to the Salem Witch Trials through Marique and her mother's death).

Rose McGowan as
Marique the Witch

Conan fails to fulfill the definition of a “hero” on two important levels: first, he is not motivated towards a greater good than himself, but by selfish ends of revenge; second, he lacks all personal virtue, which the writer tries to turn into virtue. His only attribute is his strength, and that accurately reflects culture/society: culture has no virtue, but it is (seemingly) stronger than Christianity (think of the power of the press, the prevalence of homosexuality, the fall of marriage, the legality of abortion, etc.).

She says she is a monk.

So what about “the girl,” in the film, Tamara? Her importance is that she is a "pure blood" and the last in a 1,000 year old blood line needed to revive Maleva, the witch’s mother. I am not positive because I never saw it, however, this maybe a reference to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. What’s important is, she’s not pure: she has sex with Conan, but symbolically, she represents the “liberated woman,” and we know this because she insists that she is a monk. She’s not a nun. She’s a monk. This is a clear reference to female ordination to the priesthood. The “monastery” (and it’s a monastery, not a convent) where she lives in co-habitation with male monks and other female “monks,” is already in ruins: it appears to be a imposing structure, however, when the camera enters the monastery grounds, huge blocks of the building lie on the ground and great roots have grown over the façade.

Heretics stick together.

The “life” Conan the Barbarian argues in favor of is the life of the passions and the appetites of a pagan way of life, doing what you want to; as Conan himself says, “I live, I love (read: I have sex), I slay and I am content.” Well, that’s the travel brochure for destination "Barbarian."

There is a game which children like to play: “If God can do anything, can He make a mountain He can’t move?” The game isn’t about God’s power, rather, about “contradiction,” and whether or not God enters into a state of contradiction; the answer, simply is no, He doesn’t. Contradiction represents a state of evil because it perpetuates conflicting states of reality; God is reality. The makers of Conan the Barbarian argue that they believe in life, but do nothing that supports genuine life; the ultimate image of this is the skull on the hilt of Conan's sword, and you just can't argue around a symbol like that.

Cowboys and Aliens: the U.S.-British Alliance

With the great sophistication of Hollywood, a big-budget, cross-genre film such as Jon Favreau's Cowboys and Aliens seemed like an act of desperation; however, there are three important aspects of the film making it a timely message and a definite anti-Barack Hussein Obama administration piece: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford and one shot that tells viewers who the aliens represent.

Cowboys and Aliens theatrical poster.

The first aspect of the film is Daniel Craig: a major British star being cast in a classic Western from Hollywood is a rather unusual move. There is a theory in literature and film called Reader Response Criticism which takes what readers and audience members know about the work and uses their understanding to enhance the narrative experience; for example, if tennis star John McEnroe is cast in a role, people bring their understanding of his "bad boy image" to whatever role he's playing, and knowing that he's John McEnroe infuses his performance so that directors can capitalize on one of the worst reputations in the world instantly.

The worst temper in the world.

The theory is similar in Cowboys and Aliens with Daniel Craig: he is 007. The actor hailed by critics and fans as the best James Bond ever is her Majesty's number one agent James Bond, and Farveau doesn't disappoint the audience. In the first five minutes of Craig's performance, he brings the famous Bond into the Old West by jumping up to a man on horseback and knocking him to the ground, not to mention that ultra-electric gizmo of the wrist weapon, so reminiscent of 007's famous gadgets. Craig, as James Bond, brings a thoroughly modern British presence to the narrative and teams up with a thoroughly tough American: Indiana Jones.

Dapper Dan at a British awards ceremony.

The second important aspect of decoding what an alien monster film set in the American Old West can possibly be about, is the second star, Harrison Ford. Just as Daniel Craig invokes James Bond, Harrison Ford invokes Indiana Jones, a unique American hero who can keep taking a blow but searches after objects that are based on a lofty ideal, such as the Ark of the Covenant, the Diamond rocks of the poor Indian village and the Holy Grail; even in the last Indiana Jones adventure, he was battling the Communists. Harrison Ford represents a side of America which always fights against the enemy of his country and does "the right thing" and never for his own gain.

Dr. Jones, if you please.

So who, or what, are the aliens?
What would be a common enemy of the British Empire and the United States? What would threaten to take over the world? What shows up and takes people away from their families and appears to be almost unstoppable?
The Nazis.

Hitler as a soldier in WWI when he vowed to avenge Germany.

Ella (Olivia Wilde) tells Jake (Daniel Craig) that the aliens value gold as much as we do; when Jake enters the aliens' compound for the second time, one shot tells the viewer everything: there are gold watches, gold-rimmed eyeglasses, and even teeth with gold fillings that have been extracted from people abducted by the aliens, just as the Nazis in World War II were abducting Jews, locking them in concentration camps and extracting everything of "value" from them they could use, including the gold in their teeth. I even read once that skin from Jewish prisoners was used by Nazis to make lamp shades.

Mass grave inside the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Knowing who the aliens are enlightens us about other aspects of the film: why did Jake scar one alien as he was escaping the first time, then meet up with that same scarred alien again? That scar symbolizes the humiliating defeat of Germany in World War I, which Hitler vowed he would repay, the first time Germany met Great Britain on the field of battle; but just as Great Britain won the first time, so, too, Jake wins in the second meeting with the alien, when Woodrow (Harrison Ford) shoots the alien (perfectly situated to suggest the Allied Victory of World War II).
So what about the fancy wrist weapon that Jake wears, what does that symbolize, if anything?
Enigma.

An example of the Enigma encryption machine.

When England "accidentally" got hold of an Enigma machine from an abandoned German U-Boat, it changed the war and gave Prime Minister Winston Churchill the "ultra secret" information he required to protect his troops and attack the Germans (in Cowboys and Aliens, Jake also "accidentally" gets the wrist weapon when the alien puts it beside Jake who manages to free himself and putting his arm down, the wrist automatically snaps into position around his arm).
In short, teaming up two iconic stars and pitting them against the greatest enemy humanity as ever known is the purpose of Cowboys and Aliens. 
There is more to decode about the film, and that will come in future posts.

Saint Winston the Nazi Slayer.

But why is this timely, and how does this undermine President Barack Hussein Obama?
In this critical atmosphere of world politics (symbolized by the barren desert at the start of the film) Great Britain and the United States must remember why we have always been allies, why we stand together, why we can depend on each other: we fought the Nazis together, and that means everything. 
British and American blood mingled on the muddy battlefields and in our united cause against the great enemy of humanity, the Nazi regime, both governments united all our talents and resources for the greater, common good, and that's how it should always be between Great Britain and the United States.

The permanent bond of friendship: Roosevelt and Churchill on Bond Street, London.

The MOST regrettable and MOST embarrassing act of ignorance that President Barack Hussein Obama made in the first days of his administration by sending the revered bust of the most honorable Sir Winston Churchill back to England only supports the lamentable record of the administration that has failed in everything except ruining our country; but let him not now, or ever, stand in the way of the solid alliance and friendship of Great Britain and the United States, and let us not fall victim to "historical amnesia" and forget the victory and the sacrifice of both sides to protect the world from evil, but let it be a permanent bond between us, regardless of the petty and uncouth airs of a derisive president.
(For more on cultural subversions of the current presidential administration, please see my post Visigoths Sacking Washington).

The Medusa Within: Clash of the Titans

The 1981 version Clash of the Titans directed by Desmond Davis is based on the riddle Perseus (Harry Hamlin) must answer to win the hand of Andromeda (Judi Bowker), but the whole film is a riddle, and just as riddles encode wisdom and insights, they also hide and reveal, part of which is that the beautiful Andromeda is actually Medusa, and the hero Perseus is actually the deformed beast Calibos. Andromeda and Medusa share the  sin of vanity and so Medusa shows us Andromeda's sin. Likewise, Perseus and Calibos share the same (sexual) desire for Andromeda, so Calibos reveals the dark side of Perseus: Medusa is Andromeda and Calibos is Perseus, and the true destiny of every hero is to find the Medusa and Calibos, kill them, and then fulfill the highest ideals of pure love. To fulfill his destiny, Perseus--like all men--must overcome both Medusa and Calibos.

The famous Ray Harryhausen Medusa for Clash of the Titans. It's totally fitting, on at least three levels, that Medusa would be an archer. First, Medusa is the opposite of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, whose son Cupid shots arrows to wound his victims with love, whereas Medusa wounds her victims with the opposite of love, hardness of heart (symbolized by the whole of their body becoming as hard as stone); secondly, hunters of this time utilized the bow and arrow, and Medusa as a hunter of men demonstrates that sexually aggressive side of women who go "hunting for a man" to marry (or even just to sleep with). The predatory nature of sexually aggressive women is seen in the body of the rattlesnake, invoking the ancient enemy of the dragon which symbolizes Satan (think of St. George and the Dragonslayer, for example). The lack of natural lighting within Medusa's "lair"--and only the created fire pits offering light--enforces this idea of unnatural sexuality because of the "fire of lust" lighting her "temple" (again, absence of natural light from the life-giving sun and only the light of fire in man-made holders). The third reason it's fitting for Medusa to be an archer is because of the traditional symbols of women archers, especially beautiful female archers (consider Katniss in The Hunger Games, Merida in Disney's Brave, Andromeda in the 2012 Wrath Of the Titans and the goddess Diana, patroness of the hunt).  Medusa, then, is the patroness of sexually aggressive females and a warning, if you will, of what happens to a woman who acts as such.

 “In my mind’s eye I see, three circles joined in priceless harmony. Two, full as the moon; one, hollow as a crown. Two from the sea, five fathoms down. One from the earth, deep underground. Tell me, what can it be?" What are the "three circles joined in priceless harmony?" The woman herself, her two breasts and her vagina. The woman's body is a work of perfection and harmony. The two pearls represent wisdom, because a pearl begins as a speck of sand, and over much time, locked within the mollusk (symbolic of the interior life) it develops layers and layers that become the pearl; with the pearls of wisdom, a woman nurtures her husband and her children. literally feeding them from her love and her gift of spirit from which she was created.  It is from the earth that all things grow, just as it is from within the "hollow" of a woman's womb that the seeds of life are sown and she is able to give birth, a woman's crowning achievement in life, to beget life.

It's vanity that turns a woman into a monster. Because the eyes are the window of the soul, to look into someone's eyes is to see their pain or their joy; to look into Medusa's eyes is to be turned into stone because she herself, as a symbol of the sexually aggressive and unnatural female is herself stone. Whereas a woman is meant to nurture others, the Medusa is that tendency within a woman to be selfish and self-centered, and when she gives into those desires instead of disciplining herself (as we learn that Andromeda fasted in protest of her mother's burning her suitors, Andromeda was also being prepared spiritually and being purified for an ideal instead of just the worldly life of the flesh) she becomes a monster.

The reason the answer is contained within “the ring,” is because that is the symbol of a covenant, the marriage covenant, and when a man means it, he says it with a ring, i.e., the promise to forsake all others. So a man's first step in the battle against the Medusa is to enter into a covenant (which is what Medusa, before her hideous transformation, did not do, committing adultery instead) and with his promise, win the trust and confidence of Andromeda so then she also desires the Medusa within herself to be defeated and killed. 

What role, if any, does Pegasus play in the film? Pegasus has always symbolized art and beauty, because a winged horse is a product of the mind, but the highest ideals of the soul. The lessons of art become the "vehicle" by which man (Perseus) is able to travel the distance necessary within himself to arrive at the place he needs to be, not only to save his Andromeda from her Medusa, but to save himself from his own Calibos. In other words, the lessons of art, including films such as The Clash of the Titans, is a way men and women learn how they should act and what they need to do in life, and those who heed the lessons--symbolized in Perseus' mounting Pegasus--are the ones who can "soar" above the daily drudgery of  life and embrace the higher ideals which guide us along our way (why Perseus rides Pegasus is because art "carries" him to what he should aspire to). This is why that awful vulture is the opposite of Pegasus: the vulture, as a symbol of death, literally "cages" the beauty of Andromeda for its appetites, instead of "freeing her" from the bondage of Calibos' lust and her own lust symbolized by her Medusa. It's a "golden cage" she enters because men and women both mistakenly believe that lust is a legitimate form of love, but the film's commentary on that is easily discerned in that "only a shadow" of Andromeda's real being enters into the cage of lust to be delivered to Calibos at his whim.

But what’s so important about this ring, is that “it was a gift from his mother,” meaning, that a man knows and appreciates the value of women according to how his mother raised him. A man who values women values women because he honors and reveres his own mother because his mother gave him the love he required when he was young and saved him from giving into a false image of himself (more on this in the caption below): a woman is a human being to him, not a sex object (and this is a man's inner-conflict to overcome his Calibos and the temptation to treat her like a sex object). A man who lacks respect for his mother's dignity will never respect any woman.

Okay, so if I am right, why on earth did Perseus' own mother have an affair with Zeus? Because it was a good social move? No, because Danae was imprisoned in a tower with the sky opened in the chamber, so natural light could come in (unlike the natural light being locked out in Medusa's chamber). Zeus, the father of all the gods, comes to her in a shimmering cloud of gold, because that is what she is in her innermost being: gold. Danae's soul has achieved the perfection she was destined to achieve because she has lived the life of meditation and been purified from the world and so now, like Hannah (the mother of Samuel in the Old Testament) she can give birth to that fruit which will live on after her. The striking similarities to the story of Mary's Annunciation and being overwhelmed with the Holy Spirit to become pregnant with Christ can not be overlooked in this narrative because that is what should happen to every woman according to the destiny decreed to her by her Father in Heaven. Danae's earthly father becomes jealous and he literally becomes an obstacle to history fulfilling itself (I am not going to get into that here). Zeus, as we see enthroned above, is Perseus' own  destiny: to wear the white garment of purity with his trophy of the slain dragon at his right hand (Perseus' slain dragon is Medusa, and the right hand symbolizes the essence of a man's inner and physical strength, so the dragon on Zeus' right hand side is how he was able to overcome his enemies). The deep blue background symbolizes the depth of wisdom he has achieved (blue symbolizes both depression and wisdom because from life's sad experiences we gain wisdom) and the aura radiating from him testifies to his inner-strength and power. This image of Zeus, then, is the real image a man needs to have of himself, not the clay, earthen figures kept in Zeus' cabinet, or the image of Calibos, rather, that man is a god, created in the likeness of God Almighty, and that is his destiny to achieve.

But the real question of Andromeda's riddle is, “What am I worth?” This is typical of every relationship: every woman has a riddle a man must answer; the good news is, it’s the same riddle for every woman; the bad news is, each woman has a different answer, and for some women, the answer changes every ten minutes. A Medusa lurks within every woman, a Calibos lurks within every man, ready to turn her virtue, value and beauty into lethal venom, full of hatred and deform her soul into the loathsome gorgon while Calibos is capable of taking the most beautiful and pure woman and turning her into the lowest of sex slaves.  But what caused Andromeda to turn into Medusa? 

Calibos. 

Medusa by Arnold Bocklin, circa 1878. 

It is a man's base sexual desire that holds a woman captive, because he lacks the wisdom to understand what her true value is; that in turn effects her and diseases her, because if the men in her life do not know how to value a woman in her created perfection, he views her only in sexual terms, an instrument for his pleasure, trapping her in a gilded cage, like the cage Andromeda steps into for the giant vulture of death to take her to Calibos. 
So what is the Medusa? 

Perseus looks upon what could have been himself: a man of stone. If a man's woman is full of love, he will be as well; if she is hard as stone in her heart, he will be too. What determines this? Slavery to the flesh. When we fail to heed the needs of the soul--meditation and self-knowledge--the soul dies, and the flesh to which we have been catering with fun, amusement and worldly desires, becomes immune to the pleasures of the world, it takes more pleasure to satisfy us each time, so we become hardened to all things, like stone. Perseus doesn't know what battle he has to fight next, but this statue is a warning to him of what will happen if he doesn't fight and win these battles: he will return to dust. Instead of the glorious afterlife for the soul (being immortalized in the stars at the end of the film) Perseus will be nothing but a pile of rocks returned to the dust of the earth.

Medusa is a woman's expression of the self-hatred she feels at not being properly valued, and the "Medusa" comes out most often in an argument. A woman's hair is her crowning glory of beauty, but in Medusa, it's been replaced by serpents who "bite back" with venom; whereas her eyes should reveal a soul gentle and pure, when a man looks into the eyes of Medusa, they turn him to stone, because her viciousness "hardens his heart" against her so that he can't overcome her; when the Medusa takes over a women (for a moment or longer) it's as if she hates the man who loves her (and what man doesn't know that feeling?). Medusa lives on the Isle of the Dead, and any woman controlled by Medusa is held captive by the death of sin because she has died to the higher calling and destiny in her life, so that is what has to be awakened within her (why we see Andromeda sleeping so much in the first part of the film, she's dead to her calling in life). 

Head of Medusa by Peter Paul Rubens

How does Perseus overcome Medusa? 

First, he begins by confronting Calibos. When Perseus and Calibos fight in the "swamp," (which symbolizes a lack of discipline in Perseus' soul) Perseus cuts off the right hand of Calibos which has the ring. Symbolically, the right hand is a sign of power and strength, so Perseus loosens Calibos' grip on him, and frees himself to see Andromeda in her true beauty and not just her ability to gratify his desires. This act in turns releases Andromeda from her bondage to Calibos and actually frees the entire city of Joppa, in other words, men cannot overestimate the importance of their purity because one man enslaved to his sexual desires enslaves the whole world.

Medusa's Head (formerly attributed to da Vinci), ca 1600, Uffizi Gallery.

This is where the "helmet of invisibility" comes in: as a gift from the goddess of wisdom Athena, it's a sign of wisdom, and that wisdom is mirrored (read "reversed") in that Perseus doesn't become invisible, but Calibos--who had been invisible to Perseus as a part of his very self--is now visible to Perseus so he can begin to see and confront him ("wisdom" gives us sight to see deeper into people, situations and, most importantly, ourselves). So why is the helmet "lost in the swamp?" Because Perseus mistakenly thinks it's not needed anymore, that he has interiorized the gift of the helmet but he has won only the first stage of his battle; that there is a swamp means Perseus has much more to clean out of his soul before he can be wedded to Andromeda.

Bust of Athena wearing a helmet.

But there's a problem: "Why didn't you kill him?" Andromeda asks Perseus, who replies that he pitied Calibos. The truth is, Perseus is too weak at this point to overcome Calibos completely, and in letting Calibos continue to live, Perseus continues "allowing" himself to see Andromeda in the not-so-purest of terms.  It's apparent that Andromeda doesn't trust Perseus, because at the party, when they discuss Calibos, Perseus tries to kiss her and she turns away: Perseus doesn't know her yet, nor has he done anything to win her trust or earn her love; like Calibos, he sees only the "shadow of her real being," the part that goes at the vulture's bidding to get into the cage; just as real a part of Andromeda is Medusa, and only after Perseus has seen that part of her, too, can he say in truth that he loves her. 

Perseus with the sword and the shield. The key to understanding what the sword means, and why Perseus needs it, comes from who gives him the sword: Aphrodite. As the goddess of love, and love-making, the golden sword is a phallic symbol, but it is the ultimate phallic symbol, the ideal materialized of how not only how a man should approach making love to the woman he loves and gives his life to, but--because making love to her means so much--it's also his ability to "cut through" without a blemish her own hardness of heart (symbolized by Ammon--Burgess Meredith--using the sword to slice the marble lying on the ground, literally, the hardness (marble) that comes from our earthly passions (the ground)). The sword, then, is also the Sword of Truth, because when a man loves a woman, he can "see through her" (the invisible helmet of wisdom that allows him to see what she is hiding and why) and cut through her weak arguments and resistance with his genuine desire to mate with her, which is the other side of the sword's meaning and why Perseus needs it. Please note, on the shield, the image of the bird in flight: the shield will let Perseus "reflect" on what is happening when he enters Medusa's temple, so he is able to literally understand what is happening instead of being turned to stone. The bird, like Pegasus, symbolizes the ability to "rise above" the situation and see what is not easily seen by others who have not attained the heights of wisdom which is the true gift of the gods.

The second gift Perseus is given is from the patron goddess of women and marriage: Hera. The gift of the shield is what every man needs. Imagine a man in an argument with a woman (Perseus confronting Medusa within her temple). The woman is firing her arrows at him, trying to wound him, but he becomes objective (Perseus tossing the shield to a pillar upon which the shield "sticks," reflecting what is going on); instead of seeing the woman he loves attacking him, he sees the Medusa lurking around within her. Because of the shield, Perseus is able to "reflect" upon what she is doing and that "reflecting" is what keeps him from getting hurt, i.e., knowing that she really doesn't mean it, but there is something wrong with her causing her to behave like this; it is the exercising of wisdom. A man has to be brave enough to take these attacks, then wise enough to see through them. 

This is the glorious moment every man should strive for, and every woman should hope will happen to her: the defeating of her Medusa, the demon of self-hatred and vanity, which forbids her from being truly joined to the man who loves her and keeps her from having a genuine self-love, the opposite of vanity which Medusa symbolizes. Perseus has gone from wearing the white robe of the "pure suitor" (the cloak Ammon found in his trunk of actors' clothes, because Perseus was acting out a role at that point, the role he thought would be enough/sufficient to win Andromeda, but that's not enough, Perseus has to really embody the art, embody the role, embody the hero) and now, because of his victory, he wears the red of love; before entering the temple (which is really a sexual reference) he wore the red of the martyr because he was willing to die for love of Andromeda, knowing that slaying Medusa was the only way to free Andromeda) but now that he has been successful, he wears the red of love because he fought and overcame his love's greatest enemy: her self-hatred. But just because Andromeda is free doesn't mean that Perseus is free.

Here is the clip where Perseus defeats Medusa in her own lair; please remember, Perseus isn't defeating Medusa just so he can sleep with Andromeda, but so the whole city and world will be free of one more monster.

Perseus has to cut off the head of Medusa because the head represents the "governing function," that which controls all else (e.g., Christ compared Himself to the Head of the Church) so when Medusa has been beheaded, Medusa no longer "governs" and "controls" Andromeda, Andromeda is free to act on the impulse of love (which is why we see her naked getting out of her bath, because she has been "stripped" of the shackles of bondage and is cleansed of the demon's presence). Like the helmet "lost in the swamp," Perseus no longer needs the shield because he has interiorized the gift and it has become a part of him. Perseus making these gifts a part of his being is what gives him power, because as the demons within him die, the part of his divinity gets stronger, not being compromised by the power either Medusa or Calibos hold (his fear of Medusa and what she can do to him and Andromeda or the weary battle he must fight within himself with Calibos).

Perseus, by Cellini, Florence, Italy.

In the spiritual life, the root of our sin is where that sin is strongest, so the last spiritual battle is the hardest, and that's what happens on their way back to Joppa. Perseus and his men sleep, and because Perseus "sleeps," Calibos pierces the head of Medusa with his trident, representing the sexual act. (It's not that Perseus and Andromeda actually have sex, rather, the two monsters coming together make a bid to reassert their control and this is how they do it; Perseus sleeping--like Andromeda in the beginning, symbolizes that Perseus is off his guard, he thinks the battles are over, and that's when the last, stinging assault is launched). Medusa's blood, (read: "the breaking of the hymen") produces those scorpion monsters which kill the soldiers (scorpions represent “the sting of death” that entered the world when Original Sin was committed), because when a woman loses her virginity, it lets loose evil (this will be discussed at greater length in October when I will be posting on monsters). 

Medusa, Caravaggio, Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

As the soldiers fight off the scorpions, Calibos whips Perseus, preventing him from picking up his sword (of course, the Sword of Truth and purified mating as opposed to the sexual act for physical gratification). The irony is, the more Calibos whips Perseus, the more determined Perseus is going to become to break the hold Calibos has over him, instead of earlier in the film when Perseus was weak enough to show pity, Perseus realizes how strong Calibos is and what it will take to finally defeat him and that's why and how the whip figures in the sword finally defeating Calibos once and for all: Perseus is determined to love Andromeda as she deserves, and this is the ultimate action for a man: "to die to himself" so that his love can be its strongest and purest for his wife and their children.

Birth of Aphrodite by Redon. The shell represents
the interior life, and because a person has wisdom
in proportion to the amount of love they have,
the Sword of Truth which Aphrodite gives to Perseus
represents both Love and Wisdom which are the
only weapons effective against the animal passions and
desires Calibos represents.

The third gift, the sword of Aphrodite, is the Sword of Truth, and it is given by Aphrodite because she is the goddess of Love; usually, she is associated with lust, but that is a "weak" reading of her, rather, "love" means a genuine self-love of himself and Andromeda that is the final weapon Perseus needs to discipline himself and overcome the temptations to impurity which Calibos lords over him. 

It's just the simple truth: either a man worships this image of himself in Calibos, or he worships the divine image within himself of his Father in Heaven. Why does Calibos wear the color blue, the color of wisdom? Because with Calibos, it's not the color of wisdom, but of depression. A man not seeking wisdom in this life is ruled by his appetites (like Calibos killing all the herd of sacred flying horses of Zeus instead of realizing they were meant to inspire and "elevate" his mind above the pleasures of the earth) which is why Calibos is covered in hair like an animal because he is an animal. The pierced ears are a sign of the "man of fashion" because a man having pierced ears in the 1980s when this was made was fashionable, so Calibos represents a man living life for a moment instead of a man seeing beyond the immediate moment. The horns? Are they meant to symbolize the devil? Possibly, but also perhaps the Prophet Moses by Michelangelo might be invoked because when Moses came down from the mountain, after seeing God, he had horns of light coming from him, instead of these horns of death coming from Calibos. Whereas Moses led his people to freedom, Calibos enslaves Joppa, and this is the reality of his being that every single man must deal with: will I free myself so I can help free others, or let myself be enslaved and thereby be a slave holder of others?

The exhaustion which drains Perseus (after the battle with the scorpions) shows him being completely weakened, and this is good. He has faced death of his inner-most being and survived. After a man has won this victory, he can face and overcome anything, even the Kraken. But Perseus gets a drink of water, and Bubo the owl comes up. Just as Bubo had fallen into the water, so in the fierceness of the battle, wisdom wasn't playing a part (it was Perseus' determination and will power that won over Calibos) wisdom must be a part of the next chapter, which is why he needs Pegasus, so Perseus knows what he must do next to have complete triumph. 

When one couple has stood up against all the detrimental forces working against them as individuals and as a couple, all society benefits because they now have a standard, an example to look up to and emulate and that is why all the city is freed when the Medusa, Calibos and the Kraken have been defeated, because false images of false goods have been shown for what they really are, and the power of good and purity has been shown to be truly desirable and the ultimate good of our being.

Why does Zeus help Perseus?
Because now Zeus can help Perseus. Before, Perseus (like the little clay figure) would have been weighed down by the weight of the demon Calibos within him, controlling Perseus' will; now that Perseus has, literally, exorcised Calibos from within himself, he is "free" and "emptied" to receive the power of His Father's Will: to stand and fight. Something fills each and everyone of us and it's either a demon or grace (the Life of God, God's Breath Of Life) and Perseus dying to himself in killing Calibos means that he has been "reborn" in the image of his Father and can now receive the Life that will empower him instead of the death of Calibos that had been weighing him down.

The overwhelming forces that work against a relationship.

Why does the head of Medusa permit Perseus to slay the Kraken?
When a man has exhibited the virtues necessary to conquer the Medusa within the woman he loves, he has the virtues to conquer anything on his life's journey. The head of Medusa is literally a trophy. Sadly, many men view the taking of a woman's virginity as a trophy, but that's a wedding gift; the head of the Medusa is a trophy validating his love for the woman and his willingness to lay down his life for her and her trust and belief in him to let him do that, in other words, she lets Perseus' love rule over her instead of Medusa's self-hatred rule over her. 

Andromeda, Edward Poynter, 1869, Private Collection. 

Another irony is, that it is her preparation to be the sacrifice for the Kraken that helps Andromeda contribute to the defeat of it. Her bath, of course, represents the cleansing of the influence of Medusa over her; her virginity is intact and she calmly is ready for her sacrifice, and even though they can't communicate with each other, this strengthens Perseus so he can arrive to defeat the Kraken. The Kraken is the symbol of culture with its numerous arms being all the devices at its control to destroy a relationship such as the press, drugs, divorce, self-image, sex and pornography.  Since they themselves have been cleansed, they are strong enough to defeat all the other forces working against their relationship.

So, what gave "birth" to Calibos? Thetis is the goddess of the sea, but in the film, she often appears in the moon and on the statue. The moon is a complex symbol, but it usually refers to our emotions, because our emotions go through cycles and change just as the unstable moon does. So Calibos can be said to be ruled by his emotions, rather than he rules his character, which is what men are called to do, and a man being ruled by his emotions is a man who will do what he wants, rather than what he should (this is not to say, at all, that men should not be emotional or destroy their emotional impulses; rather, men and women need the gift of discernment to understand how our emotions play with us and how we act upon them and the consequences that way of life might lead to, turning us into animals).

I have mentioned before, 1981 was an important year for great art: at the end of the sexual revolution, the cultural revolution and the beginning of the "divorce revolution," the false oppurtunities society offered for "better relationships" and a good time, were completely debunked by Clash of the Titans, a truly counter-cultural film for its day. It not only supported the virtuous way and path of individuality for individuals and relationships, but showed how it is the only Way.
Eat Your Art Out,
The Fine Art Diner