Three Drops Of Blood: Snow White and the Huntsman

This image is particularly interesting because of the positioning of the knife, suggesting--quite plainly--that Ravenna (Charlize Theron) seeks not just beauty everlasting, but total power as well, because the knife takes on the role of a phallic symbol, meaning that Ravenna isn't just jealous of other women and their beauty/youth, but she is also jealous of men and their penis with the power it represents. Given that she uses her looks to seduce men, we shouldn't be surprised that she would want to castrate men (the knife) and make them unable to seduce her, or that she would want to exchange the power of her sexuality for the "real" power of a monarch and the state. Why is this important? Besides just making Ravenna a bad person who wants to kill her step-daughter, it also makes her a kind of hermaphrodite, a blurring of both genders, just as her person becomes blurred with the black ravens we see in this image.

(This post builds off Walt Disney & the Brothers Grimm: A Comparative Analysis Of Snow White and The Peacock vs the Swan: Mirror, Mirror with Julia Roberts, released earlier this year).

Snow White and the Huntsman: you should see this film regardless that it suffers from some script deficiencies, on one hand, yet is exceedingly interesting because of the script on the other. While some critics support the film as a Feminist Manifesto, it's because Snow White and the Huntsman is one more in a growing number of contemporary artistic depictions of new defenses of traditional masculinity and responsibility that I support it. What dialogue there is is good, there just isn't enough of it, with the exception of Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron). The script does have a good structure, balancing and mirroring various aspects of the plot to demonstrate how both the queen and Snow White (Kristen Stewart) are opposite ends of the spectrum, leading us to another characteristic of the script I wasn't expecting: its reliance upon traditional spirituality to depict good and evil.

So, is the film pro-capitalist or pro-socialist? It's anti-status quo.  The dwarfs have a two-fold significance, as they did in the Grimm Brothers' original tale, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Mirror, Mirror. The dwarfs are unemployed, having once been the royal gold miners, meaning, because Queen Ravenna did away with the king and all of the upper class, there is no one the dwarfs can mine for now, so they became bandits, robbing and pillaging, dreaming of the men they once were and hoping to become that once again. This important fact of their identity establishes why they are the ones who, "little people" though they are (politically disenfranchised, having no stature in society) they are the ones who storm the castle first (going through the sewers to get in as Snow White went through the sewers to get out) and they are the ones who "combined weight" is able to lift the gates so Snow White's force can get through the castle defenses. The "power of the little people" is the first to join Snow White and recognize her as the legitimate ruler of the kingdom and it's with the sword of a dwarf the Snow White kills the evil queen.

The Queen.
Why does evil do, what evil does?
For Ravenna (we'll discuss her name in a moment) her beauty is her life, when she ceases to be beautiful, she ceases to be. Unlike the queen in the Grimm Brothers' version, the Disney and Mirror, Mirror versions, who all wanted to be beautiful for the sake of beauty, when Ravenna ceases being beautiful to men she can manipulate and suck dry of their power, she will die (more on this below in the spiritual allegory section). Snow White and the Huntsman is ultimately a tale of two types of leaders: the leader who has the appearance of power and prestige, and the leader who is power because of purity of intention. Everything she does, she does to stay alive, which is her sole occupation, bringing us to the "Feminist agenda" of the film.

Ravenna in her "wedding dress" as she walks down the church aisle to become the queen and glancing back at little Snow White behind her. Oscar winner costume designer Coleen Atwood talked in an interview about the "boning" used to make the sleeves of the dress to emphasize the queen's affinity to death and this scene brings it out. As the beautiful bride walks with everyone looking at her and approving of her beauty, Ravenna becomes jealous that they are instead looking at Snow White. Now we can understand why it's fitting that she has bones around her shoulders. Shoulders symbolize what weighs us down, our burdens (they are also part of our arms, which symbolize strength, so there is an interesting balance in characters between what keeps them down, what they have to struggle against, and what gives them strength). Ravenna's burden is her fear of death which is always bringing her in contact with death (those she kills and destroys to stay young). It's interesting to compare and contrast Ravenna with Emily Hamilton from The Raven:  Emily used the boning from her corset to help free her from a coffin and being buried alive, but Ravenna's dress enslaves her and buries her alive.

Many critics, as I noted, identify Ravenna with Feminism and that reveals the "death" qualities of the way of thinking. I know many Feminists will immediately jump to arms and argue with me about this, but I really don't care. As I hope to demonstrate the false images of masculinity the film confronts below in our discussion of William and the Huntsman, the film also confronts false femininity. Feminism, as a theory and social movement, views the world through the eyes of power structures (as did Zoey in The Dictator):  either the balance of power is fairly distributed, or it's unevenly exercised by men.

Ravenna's wedding dress, it looks beautiful, until you realize what it's made of.

In Dark Shadows, Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer) asks Victoria what she thinks of the equality of the sexes, and Victoria responds that men shouldn't be made equal to women because then they would become unmanageable; as long as women hold a greater advantage in the power struggle, then, it's okay for power to be one-sided, but not if that side falls to men. Having said this, we can understand the problems of Ravenna a little better. 

Young Greta, one of the few females in the village which the vampire-esque Ravenna hasn't drained of life, until now. Ravenna sucks out the youth and vitality of Greta, which will turn Greta into a little old lady, but once the queen has died, Greta will be restored to her youthfulness. Like a black hole, Ravenna has drained the countryside of all its resources and people; has someone else in the country been draining the economy and resources? Please note, also, the metal contraption on her thumb (which, instead of jewels, she wears on her hands). This is also an accurate depiction of what Feminists do to other women: no one oppresses women like Feminists, because Feminists don't let women really chose what they want to do, Feminists try to force women into traditionally male-dominated roles, instead of letting women who want to fulfill traditionally feminine roles do what they want (for example, stay home and raise their children). Just as Ravenna destroys young Greta above, so, too, does modern-day Feminism destroy young women.

Just as Ravenna lives only for herself, not giving birth to a child and seeking only power, so Feminists with their pro-abortion agenda and concern with societal power structures do the same. Ravenna's self-centered lifestyle drains the culture of life--because Ravenna takes life instead of giving it--so the whole land, like Ravenna's own body, becomes barren. At one point, before she realizes she has to kill Snow White, we see a whitish, watery substance coming out of the mouths of the gargoyle statues along the castle and being eagerly collected by the poor of the town. Ravenna mocks them, remembering when her and Finn were poor like that, too. Well, then why doesn't she do something to help them, knowing what that poverty is like? That's the sign of evil, a particular feminine evil because the milky substance invokes the nurturing quality of motherhood that the queen has foregone in favor of herself (we'll juxtapose this against the women of the lake village who scarred themselves for their children).

How does the queen come to be the queen? Like the original tale, after the death of Snow White's mother, the real queen, the king was heartbroken; taking advantage of his depression, a strange army attacked, driving him to war. After a phantom army was defeated, a wagon was found in which a beautiful young woman was kept prisoner. So taken by Ravenna's beauty was the king, that he married her the next day. In the image above, she bends over the paralyzed body of the king on their wedding night. As he initiated their consummation, he whispers, "You will be the ruin of me," and she replies, "I was ruined by a king like you" and speaks of how "men use women" as the king falls under a spell causing the veins in his face to protrude and he can't move. Ravenna then stabs him in the heart and proceeds to open the castle to her real army and takes control. It's a very graphic reversal of the marriage act: instead of the king's body entering into Ravenna's body to, hopefully, beget life, Ravenna's knife enters into the king to beget death. This is ultimately the power reversal in social and political relations that Feminists seek.

It's typical in re-visions of Snow White to attribute a cannibalistic tendency to the evil queen, depicting graphically how the queen robs the world of life whereas Snow White gives life. Queen Ravenna is seen eating the heart of a bird, and told by the Mirror that if she eats the heart of Snow White, she will have immortality (more on this regarding Snow White's character below). In the Disney version, the huntsman--instead of bringing the queen the heart of Snow White as proof that he has killed her--brings the queen the heart of a pig. That doesn't happen in Snow White and the Huntsman, but it doesn't need to. In The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe (John Cusack) had dissected a human heart which a raccoon named Karl then proceeded to eat. Hearts--regardless of whether they are human or animal--don't tend be be eaten in films very often, so when two films share the same unusual act, we should take note (please see The Raven & the Raccoon: Edgar Allan Poe & Karl Marx).
So, why does the queen eat hearts?

Perhaps the second most interesting character in the film is the Magic Mirror. In the Walt Disney version, when the evil queen summons the voice of the mirror, she calls it "Slave in the mirror," and in Snow White and the Huntsman, it's Ravenna who is the slave to the Mirror. As Ravenna imprisons Snow White in the tower, so Ravenna imprisons herself within the flat surface of the highly polished gold surface from which the god of the mirror comes forth to answer her. When we first see the Mirror, it's a large, flat disk with only a slight inversion in the very middle, just like an enormous cymbal of a drum set, and like a cymbal, the mirror is a "symbol" for the queen's interior life: flat. The Mirror, then, is the opposite of the White Hart symbolizing Snow White's interior life: the Hart is living, the Mirror only appears to be living; the Hart blesses Snow White, the Mirror curses the queen with knowledge of her demise and withering beauty; the Hart lets Snow White see what her destiny is, the Mirror shows the queen how to hasten her own ruin by committing the atrocities of killing and black magic. When the Mirror "appears" to the queen, it comes out in a kind of thick, liquid form, like melted gold, pooling on the floor and rising up to a hooded human form (above) because that's how the pronouncements of the Mirror are, they come out merely as words that Ravenna gives meaning to ("body" symbolic of the structure of her understanding that she is fairest in the land, so she will live another day, etc.). The mirror "reflects" the other statues within the queen's court room, hooded religious figures like the famous ascetic monks and hermits from the early history of the British Isles, but their natural stone figures counter the "fool's gold" of the Mirror because Ravenna pursues that which will fade and pass, unlike the true gold of heaven the saints pursued.

The heart is the seat of the soul, to devour the heart is to--at least allegorically--devour the soul. This might seem like a stretch, but when Snow White confronts the queen towards the end and Ravenna steps into a fire pit, her skin blistering from the heat but no apparent harm coming to her, and she exclaims, "I will give this wretched world the queen it deserves!" you believe she's the devil. Which adds an interesting dimension to her ability to "heal wounds," such as those her brother Finn receive (or herself, for that matter). It's not so much that she can heal, as she can undo the good that has been done by a person in trying to stop her and her evil.

Another fabulous example of the queen's perversity: the royal milk bath. Well, we can't be sure it is milk, it has such a thick viscosity, unlike the milk we are used to seeing. The thickness of this milk, against the thin, watery milk we just saw coming out of the mouths of the gargoyles to the poor townspeople below demonstrates how Ravenna is keeping the best for herself, which is not a typical female virtue. Whereas a mother is supposed to give milk to her young, the queen bathing in it shows how she tries to cover up her black soul to be "white" like snow. As Ravenna goes into this "bath" her selfishness only makes her dirtier and more evil, while Snow White (as in The Shawshank Redemption) takes a "bath" in the sewer but comes out cleaner for it because it's an act of faith, and precedes the even greater act of faith in going into the Dark Forest.

For example, a young man and an old man are brought in before her for ambushing her supply train; the young man takes a guard's knife and stabs Ravenna in the stomach (an act that could be said to be like an abortion, because of the "evil fruit" Ravenna has borne as queen, barrenness, and an attempt to undo what she has done) and Ravenna immediately "heals" herself from it. The evil within Ravenna is stronger than the good in the young man, it still hurts her, that's why she requires the life from the heart of the young man to re-generate her beauty (invoking Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom). Snow White's purity and innocence, however, is far stronger than Ravenna's evil, hence, the reason Ravenna can't overcome her except in Snow White's one momentary weakness when she kisses "William."

Finn in the background, the queen's brother and henchman the way the Huntsman is Snow White's guardian. He has two important characteristics: his hair and a scar on his forehead. His hair, pale and in a Dutch boy cut, indicates his immaturity, literally, his lack of development. When he goes into Snow White's prison to fetch her for the queen, Snow White makes the comment that he watches her but never comes inside the prison, indicating for us--as he touches her--his frustrated sexual development that has been re-directed towards carrying out evil on behalf of his sister. White is the color of faith, innocence, purity, but also the color of a corpse, a body devoid of a soul animated by those virtues. Finn's unnatural sexual desire for Snow White makes him willing to turn her over to the queen so she can be killed  because watching her die then becomes the climax of his desire for her (the domination of her through her death). Just as Ravenna reversed the "marriage act" with Snow White's father, so Snow White reverses it with Finn: although she's lying in bed, the nail she uses isn't a phallic symbol of her own power--like the knife Ravenna uses on the king--rather the twisted, rusty, bent nail is a recognition of Finn's phallic power over her, and her "reaching" for this knowledge through the window of meditation, allows her to "expose" what Finn wants with her to "deface him" (she uses the nail to scratch his face) freeing her from her prison (more on her imprisonment below).

Why does the queen's magic not work in the "Dark Forest?"
Ravenna is named for an ancient Italian city that was, for quite some time, the seat of Christian rule in the early Dark Ages. Importantly, it's the famous medieval forest of Ravenna which inspired the forest in the beginning of Dante's The Divine Comedy (and Ravenna the city is mentioned by name in Canto 5 of Inferno). The Dark Forest symbolizes, as in Dante's work, the inner labyrinth of sin and darkness within a person that we must each overcome; because Ravenna does not use her Mirror for proper reflecting and self-meditation, rather, for the application of her power and appetites, Ravenna fears the Dark Forest because she fears seeing what lies beneath her own facade of evil, which leads us to the only character who has been through the Dark Forest: the Huntsman.

The importance of the Huntsman to the story can be surmised by the fact that he is also the narrator of the story. In a unique and well-played twist, Mirror, Mirror had the queen (Julia Roberts) telling the story, not Snow White and the importance of the voice speaking the words carries over to this film as well: instead of a wealthy, corrupt ruler telling the story, it's a poor, working, broken man telling the story, a man usually confined to the margins of the audience's attention.

We discover that the Huntsman is the only one who has been into the Dark Forest and came out and that he would rather be killed by the queen's guards than return. The queen's promised reward to the Huntsman is to bring back his wife, resurrect her from the dead; Finn spills that his sister can't; why not? The Huntsman's wife's life went to fueling Ravenna's power and beauty like all the other murdered women in the village; to bring the wife back from the dead would be to relinquish power all ready spent and that, for Ravenna, would require an act of love, of which she is incapable. This "economy" of evil is important to note because of how it is used against Snow White and how Snow White uses it against Ravenna.

After deciding to protect Snow White rather than turn her over the the queen, the Huntsman makes an agreement with her for a reward, spitting in the palm of his hand before shaking hers; why? Two reasons: one, the spit comes from his mouth, the place of his appetites, so the Huntsman seals their deal by assuring her that the promised gold pieces is appealing enough to him for him to fulfill his agreed part of the bargain; two, since he's poor, his word is all he has (he's also the narrator in the beginning of the story, so he has a valuable word, but that's all) and his spit is the water from his mouth, so it nearly takes on a religious oath (since water can symbolize the sacrament of baptism and the Holy Spirit) so the spit adds a religious dimension to his end of the bargain to which he has pledged himself.

Why has the Huntsman been into the Dark Forest? As discussed with Ravenna's name, and the meaning of the Dark Forest in terms of inner spiritual contemplation and how the forest illustrates the life of sin and being lost in general, the Huntsman has been into the Dark Forest because of the death of his wife, as we discover later during his monologue at Snow White's side as she lays in state ("dead"); the self-realizations which come to us through suffering are the same virtues the Huntsman tries to drown with drinking. The suffering of the Huntsman seems to have been for naught, but permits him knowledge so he can escape the traps of self-meditation the Dark Forest presents (again, this will make a bit more sense below with Snow White, and it all ready does for those who have read the comparative analysis of the Brothers Grimm and Walt Disney versions).

Snow White and the man-eating troll in the Dark Forest. Snow White encounters two creatures in the forest, the troll being the first and the White Hart the second. This is accurate: we all are supposed to encounter at least two creatures in the Dark Forest (Dante encountered more) but the one is the image of the devil within us, the second should be the image of Christ within us. Just as Snow White stabbed Finn with the nail, so she uses the Huntsman's own knife to stab him in the shoulder. Is this a reversal of the sexual act, as the queen did to the king? No, because it's in the shoulder. Again, the shoulder, as being a part of the arm, balances what gives us strength with what weighs us down, by stabbing him in the shoulder, she makes a virtuous act in protecting herself from him, but his strength (the goodness in him) is strong enough that it doesn't overcome him, in other, words, it's the inversion of the episode when the young male prisoner stabbed the queen in the stomach and she healed instantly. The royal personage stabs the commoner but he is not overcome by it, physically or emotionally (he doesn't abandon her because of what she did). Snow White's appeal to the Huntsman not to turn her over is mirrored in her silent appeal to the troll not to destroy them, because if the Huntsman (of which the troll is symbolic) gives into his lesser emotions, he will destroy them both. It's not that Snow White really overcomes the troll, but the Huntsman is good enough to allow the "troll within him" be overcome by her goodness.

The virtue of the screenplay is the balance of psychoanalytic doubles it provides to the characters, for example, as stated, Finn is to the queen what the Huntsman is to Snow White. What is evil and perverse is Finn is natural and healthy in the Huntsman, although he requires purgation because of his depression and bitterness over the loss of his wife (which is natural). As the twisted nail Snow White uses to "deface" Finn symbolizes Finn's unnatural and immature sexuality, so the troll symbolizes the Huntsman's sexuality and his increasing desire for Snow White, even at the moment he denies it to her.Just after the Huntsman tears the skirt off Snow White's outfit so she can move easier, he reads the fear on her face--fearing a sexual assault--and he tells her not to flatter herself. They are then in the heart of the Dark Forest, crossing a stone bridge and they encounter the troll, a suitable double for the Huntsman, twofold.

The outfits of the two travelers are well contrasted. Snow White's wearing of finished materials, textiles woven, indicates civilization and achievement (despite the poor condition) whereas the Huntsman wears leather, animal skin, indicative of the "animal passions" which his drinking and brawling (his life before he met his wife) reveals. Why does the Huntsman tear Snow White's skirt off? It reminds the audience of Romancing the Stone when Michael Douglas' character cuts off the heels of Kathleen Turner's character's shoes ("They were Italian," she laments; "Now, they're practical," he retorts).  It's not because of a sexual advancement, nor is it because of practicality, rather, the leggings the torn skirt reveals makes her resemble him more, and his "manly courage" (she just got tangled up in the branches that turned to snakes and threatened to psychologically destroy her) is meant to aid her in the rest of her journey, which it does. A characteristic validating this interpretation is their hair: Snow White's is loose and wild, symbolic of her thoughts (the Dark Forest really takes its toll on her) but the Huntsman has his pulled back, a sign of disciplining his thoughts, which he has done so he can keep his wits about him (as when he throws Finn on the tree stump, perhaps a reference to the M. Night Shymalan film The Village when Noah (Adrian Brody) falls to his death) and the Huntsman knows to cover his mouth so he doesn't inhale the hallucinogenic air arising from the bog.

First, trolls are notoriously dumb and, regrettably, this fits the Huntsman. When a woman in the lake village dresses his wound and tells him that he has carried a heavy burden, she refers of course to the sorrow caused him by his wife's death, instead, the Huntsman replies that Snow White isn't very heavy. The "obtuseness" of the Huntsman's intellect enforces that, regardless of how smart one is or is not, we are all bound to make the journey through the Dark Forest, but this becomes an important point of interest of why the Huntsman's kiss awakens Snow White and William's does not.

The Huntsman and dwarfs, watching Snow White and the White Hart, just before Finn attacks them again. "You have eyes, Huntsman, but you do not see," but the Huntsman does feel, and the characterization of him as being rather big and dull-witted enhances the depths of his emotions he expresses to the "dead" Snow White later on. The balding, white haired dwarf on the Huntsman's left, Muir, is blind; when we first see him, he wears the medieval mask of a doctor during the plague times (the long beak and large eyes, from which fake doctors get the nickname "Quack doctors"). The plague costume of the blind dwarf deepens the meaning and symbolism of the "darkness" of which he speaks of Snow White leading them out of as being both the economical and psychological darkness as well as spiritual plague that sweeps the kingdom since the king's death.

We can argue, further, that the enormous figure of the troll suddenly turning on Snow White is like the Huntsman hunting her which she managed to lead him into betraying Finn rather than turning her over to him. Originally, I didn't think this beast was a troll, I thought it was a minotaur, which has been making the rounds in films lately because it symbolizes the darkest aspects of male sexuality that can't be controlled. It's possible that it still does, since the scene just before is when the Huntsman tears her dress and denies he has any sexual intentions towards her (then proceeds to show her how to defend herself, and it might be because he wants to make sure she can defend herself against him, too); well, come on, he couldn't deny a sexual interest if it didn't exist, could he? But just as the Huntsman defends Snow White from Finn, so he defends her against his own desires as well; this, too, is part of the reason why his kiss will awaken her when William's does not.

Without a doubt, there is a political/class meaning to the Huntsman delivering Snow White from death rather than the Prince. In Walt Disney's version, the Prince was the Christ figure who freed the soul of the beloved with the breath of life, the kiss (the same breath of life Ravenna steals from Greta because Ravenna requires life but only God can give life and Ravenna, like a parasite, has to feed off what all ready exists). In this election year, when the current administration has stirred up class warfare, the poor and unemployed flocking to the ranks of the new, returning ruler to overtake the corrupt ruler, is a message of substantial importance meant to reach audiences far beyond the limitations of a fairy tale.

Why does the Huntsman leave Snow White at the lake village? We wouldn't really be able to know, except the thug which the Huntsman was fighting when we first see him get thrown out of the pub is now a part of Finn's gang and the Huntsman has to fight him again. In short, the thug alerts the viewer that this is a double for the Huntsman and the way the Huntsman was when he was fighting this man--lowly, base, drunken, concerned only with himself, nothing higher--is what has come back to haunt him again now that he knows who Snow White really is (it's the Huntsman being his own worse enemy and the inner battle he's waging). It's only a momentary weakness, however, because the thug is easily overcome, but it was sufficient enough to make the Huntsman realize he was putting her at greater risk being with her and falling into temptation of turning her over to the queen, than she would be on her own, defending herself. This is another clue as to why the Huntsman is able to revive Snow White rather than William: as the lake village burns, the Huntsman is able to get to Snow White because he has "cleared the obstacles" between them (symbolically and spiritually speaking) but a structure on fire falls between William and Snow White, meaning that "something on fire" (lust) stands between them and he can't get to her.
Which leads us to William.

William finding Snow White after the queen has poisoned her and he kisses her. We shouldn't doubt that William is good, but William isn't good enough to counter the strength of the queen's evil, even as she weakens from Snow White's growing power. It's important to fully understand this, because the film makes the point that a man is a prince by his worth, not by his birth, and the bravery of the Huntsman (not just in protecting Snow White from Finn and the queen, but protecting her from his own desires) elevates him above other men and makes him worthy to protect her, in more ways than one.

William is a very able warrior, brave and skilled, willing to risk his life to save Snow White and conscious of what his duty to her is. Why, then, when he discovers her, is he unable to awaken her, according to the legend, with his kiss? William is in a state of sin. William disobeyed his father and went to find Snow White instead of staying at the Duke's castle; in consequence, Gus the dwarf dies defending him from an arrow of Finn's men (if William had not tried getting Snow White up on his horse with him, she and Gus could have made it to a safe hiding place, but his attempt at rescuing her meant he put her in harm's way by slowing down her escape).  William exhibits virtue, and those virtues make him strong and capable of fighting, but Snow White and the Huntsman makes the case that William's virtues aren't as important as those of the Huntsman's (it was disobedience which led to the downfall in Eden). But Snow White is the means of weighing that balance, so it's time to turn to her.

In her prison talking to Greta. The physical description of Snow White is important because it mirrors the interior reality of her identity. In the original, her hair is as black as an ebony window frame, she is white as snow and red as blood. In Snow White and the Huntsman, her hair is black as the raven's wing; why this change? Partly because ebony is not as familiar of a luxury material today as it was in the days of the original fairy tale, but also, too, because of the emphasis the film makers want to put upon her particular characteristics. The ebony frame of the window in the original meant the mother of Snow White wanted her daughter to possess the gift of meditation (the window) and meditation on death, i.e., the things of the world are passing, to cultivate that interior beauty that will not fade. In both accounts, Snow White is "red as blood" because blood symbolizes love: the love is deepest that is willing to be shed for what it loves, and Snow White is willing to die for the right and just cause, which is indeed virtuous and noble. Why, then, does this film change her hair, symbolic of thoughts, to the raven's wing, a bird associated with death, even with Queen Ravenna (who turns herself into a raven)? There are many spiritual states of death, and Ravenna is in a state of death, and so, too, is Snow White, even until she is crowned queen.  Snow White, with her virtue of innocence and purity her "white as snow" soul gives her and her willingness to die for right and just causes, is able to meditate and glean from death (the raven's wing) what Ravenna cannot (Ravenna fears death, which causes her to kill others to preserve herself whereas Snow White loves and is willing to die to save others) and Snow White's ability to meditate on death strengthens her against that ultimate human fear of dying so that, as she announces after waking from the Huntsman's kiss, that she has seen what the queen sees and knows how to kill her.

Just as Ravenna has a magic mirror, so too does Snow White: her prison cell. The queen fails to "reflect" in her Magic Mirror to see herself for what she truly is, evil, but the solitude of Snow White's prison leaves her with nothing but reflecting upon herself so she can nourish that inner beauty her mother commended her for. We can be confident of this interpretation because the first words we hear from (the grown) Snow White are the words to the Our Father, the Lord's Prayer, which she says for the repose of the soul of her mother and father (the two "dolls" she holds). She then lights a fire, to keep warm, but also because that fire is the "fire of hope" which keeps her soul alive that she is being kept alive for a purpose.

When she sees the bird outside the prison cell window, and reaches out to the bird, the window symbolizes her meditation because the window is the window "into her soul" and the bird, black and white, like her black hair and white purity, she recognizes as a part of herself that she must trust. Even when she sees the birds over the town sewer, she trusts that is where she is to go and does it, symbolizing, again, the remaining filth within herself that must be overcome so her purity can become ever greater to defeat the ever greater growth of the queen's evil. By going through the filth of her soul, like Dante going through Hell, Snow White emerges stronger and purer. (We can be assured that the sewer is only a symbol because sewers weren't developed in the largest cities--and certainly not small ones--until late in the 1700s if that; sewage was literally tossed out of the window and onto the streets where everyone walked).

After her swim and she's on the beach.

Once Snow White comes out through the raging waters, the purifying grace that is its own form of cleansing, she walks on the beach and her shoulders are exposed (pictured above), which juxtaposes nicely against the "bone sleeves" of Ravenna in her wedding gown, because this moment is like Snow White's wedding to her destiny, to the Holy Spirit: the white horse has long been a symbol of the Holy Spirit because of its role in the Book of Revelations (it symbolizes the purity of intention, motivation, drive, the vehicle of the pure heart's desire to fulfill its purpose). That's why, as Snow White walks along the beach to see the white horse "waiting" for her, her shoulders are bare: she has no will of her own, but is willing to do what God intends for her. Getting upon the horse, she lets the horse take her to where she needs to be, but is not necessarily where she wants to be... the Dark Forest.

A way to distinguish between a good person and a virtuous person is in terms of the body: a good person might be thin and appear to be in good shape, but that doesn't mean they can run a marathon, or lift a great weight; a virtuous person can. The challenges each day a virtuous person endures makes them stronger in the virtues so they can exercise heroic acts of virtue that a (merely) good person cannot. Towards the end, when Snow White has stabbed Ravenna and she's dying, Snow White says something that sounds odd: "You can't have my heart." Why does she say this? In a film where there is so little dialogue, why bother to say the obvious?... unless it's not so obvious what she's really saying. Earlier, Snow White confesses that she feels sorry for Ravenna, and that's a sign of compassion in Snow White, but for a woman who is destined to become queen, and hence the executor of justice, she comes to recognize that all Ravenna has done is through Ravenna's free will, hence, Ravenna is not deserving of any sympathy, or, Snow White's heart (Snow White in effect is saying, I don't feel sorry for you nor do I regret killing you, this is justice).

If Snow White's so pure, why does she have to go through the Dark Forest? We can say that the Dark Forest is the opposite of the Garden of Eden: whereas everything was green and prosperous, orderly and nourishing food for our souls in Eden, in the Dark Forest, which feeds off our fears and sins, shows the disorder sin has caused within us, the death as the scars of Original Sin which plagues us all and the weakness of will brought about by sin weighing us down. Snow White's good, just as the Huntsman is, but as we have seen, good isn't good enough to overcome the evil of the queen, there has to be heroic good.

I don't think this scene actually made it into the film, yet it demonstrates the symmetry of the film's structure so well, I would like to include it in our discussion. For Ravenna to engage in any "reflection" would mean that she would shatter like the mirror in this image, because she has become so hard and brittle with her sin, she's incapable of withstanding the good within Snow White. Question: why did the queen let Snow White live all those years instead of killing her when she killed her father? Twofold. First, Ravenna probably thought she could, at some point, use Snow White as a bargaining tool in diplomatic relations should she ever need to. Secondly, and this supports the first reason, she never saw Snow White as a threat because evil always always always underestimates the strength and power of good and always always always overestimates its own strength, power and invincibility. The queen always asking the Mirror who the fairest in the land is means more of a validation to her security rather than a warning of potential threats because the queen doesn't really believe anyone can threaten her.

Let's briefly discuss the women of the lake village because they are one example of heroism which Snow White is destined to surpass. The women are a kind of double for Snow White by revealing to us a lesser path of heroism. The sacrifice these women make is for their children, and they put their inner beauty above the outer beauty Ravenna values, so they are heroic women; it's the cultivation to perfection of what you have, however, that is the source of real, genuine power, and Snow White not marring her beauty to save herself is the empowerment which she is capable of. The women of the lake village really don't have this option, so they choose the difficult but heroic path of marring their exterior beauty for the sake of their children (and it saves themselves both physically--because Ravenna doesn't kill them so she herself can live--but spiritually as well so they don't become vain of their beauty as Ravenna has become of hers).

The great white Hart: what is it and what does it mean?
Of course it is a symbol of Christ not only because of earliest Christian depictions of Christ as the "Deer longing for running water," but because an enormous white Hart would be the ultimate in the population of deer, it being the rarest and most noble of any deer ever encountered (which is what the one of the dwarfs tell the Huntsman, "No one has ever seen this," and that refers just as much to us, the audience, and whether we will see what is happening but not truly see what is happening). Snow White needs to see the Hart for only a moment so it can "bless" her (which validates the Christ imagery because you can only give what you have all ready received and Christ has received all power from the Father so He can give the blessing so she will be able to fulfill her destiny). It's from this blessing that Snow White will be able to gain the knowledge that she is capable of overcoming Ravenna.
Why isn't she protected from the apple?

When Finn's men shoot the Hart in the side (referencing Christ being pierced by the spear) it breaks up into a myriad of white butterflies; does this suggest that it's the same as when Ravenna turns into a myriad of ravens? No, for the Hart to transform into the butterflies means that it's power and strength which it symbolizes has not diminished but is taking a new form to be everywhere it needs to be. Ravenna turning into the ravens means she has been weakened and is breaking apart (when she returns to the castle, she's like a pool of tar, injured weak and trying to pull herself together).

It's important to note that, in spite of all this extraordinary stuff going on, Snow White is still not "spotlessly" white; she's got dirt beneath her nails. When Snow White walks with "William" (the queen disguised as William) Snow White touches his face and we see that her hands have dirt on them; what does it mean? It's ambiguous how Snow White fells about William, and that's probably the answer: she's not sure if she loves him, but her taking a bite of the apple and then "wasting it" so he won't get any, like their childish game, means she's "playing" with him now, and her kiss isn't the kiss of love. Ravenna can trap Snow White in the trap that Ravenna herself would have fallen into as she told the young handsome captive earlier in the film just before she took his heart from him. Hands are symbolic of our strength, and this childish prank Snow White plays on William, unbecoming for a queen, reveals the "dirt" on Snow White and what keeps her power from being as pure as her name suggests, and what she needs to have in order to overcome Ravenna.

When Snow White looks down at the apple and sees it turn black and moldy, the apple "reflects" like a genuine mirror that spot of sin still within Snow White that the queen can capitalize upon and use to her own advantage. Why didn't the Hart's blessing protect her from the sin/Ravenna's trick? Snow White actually gains more strength from this time of "death" than she would have if she had not had the apple. If she hadn't eaten the apple, she wouldn't have overcome this blemish within her soul, leaving it there to grow and show up at another time--perhaps leaving room to take pity on Ravenna instead of dispatching her, which is what happens in Mirror, Mirror. All of us receive our destiny from Christ, the Author of Life, and it is our free will if we accept or reject it. In accepting it, Snow White accepts the charge which we all have: defeat the evil that tries to rule the world but we cannot free others until we ourselves have been made free.

In truth, the Huntsman's genuine, sincere and purified love (that is, free of lust) for Snow White is what makes up for the spot of sin still upon Snow White's soul at this point. How is that possible? The religion in the film is that of the Roman Catholic Church (other denominations didn't exist at this time, all Christians were Catholics) and when we saw Snow White praying for her mother's and father's souls in the beginning, she was offering prayers on their behalf that any debt of sin which they still owed God from the life on earth might be repaid by her prayers (if there is even one shade of imperfection upon a soul when it dies, it goes to Purgatory to be freed from that imperfection before it can enter the presence of God; by loving prayers offered up on behalf of the deceased, the living can aid them in shortening their time in Purgatory and entering heaven for eternity). In effect, when the Huntsman gives his monologue about the better man that Snow White has inspired him to become, this is what he has done because he has freed himself from sin, so even though Snow White's virtue is greater overall than his, the depth of his love overpowers that blemish remaining on her soul.

Snow White in her armor like Joan of Arc. The White Tree invokes the White Hart and White Horse, her destiny and the vehicles of it, meaning the kingdom is hers by right and justice.

Finally, what did Ravenna's mother do to her daughter?
Whereas Snow White's mother blessed her daughter, telling her that her beauty was inside and to always guard it, Ravenna's mother bestowed a "pagan" blessing upon Ravenna. For pagans, what we would call a spell, was a blessing as a "king" came to put to death the old ways of paganism in Ravenna's village and bring about a new order, i.e., Christ through his missionaries, Ravenna's mother invoked the pagan gods to watch over her daughter and her daughter, as she grew, accepted the black power the pagan gods (devils) gave her. The film's landscape, Celtic knot decorations on the castle walls and runic writing along the edge of the Magic Mirror's frame all indicate that the film takes place in the Dark Ages in the vicinity of the British Isles. Ravenna's mother, then, pledges her daughter to their pagan deities as Christian missionaries came to drive out the darkness and bring forth the Light of Christ. If you get a chance to see it, please do; it's not the perfect film I was hoping for, but it is good and an important social document for this election year.
Eat Your Art Out,
The Fine Art Diner

Snow White & the Huntsman; New Bourne Legacy Trailer, Prometheus, House At the End Of the Street & Magic Mike

Snow White and the Huntsman... it's not as spectacular spectacular as I was hoping; the primary problem is with the script, there isn't enough dialogue, and in some places, what dialogue there is, should have happened five minutes ago. There are many things about the script I really really like, and that's what my post will be about! Visual effects were fantastic, amazing performances by Ms. Theron and Mr. Hemsworth (who also doesn't have enough dialogue, but what he has he makes count) and Kristen Stewart's bad reputation for acting didn't really follow her to this film, she did much better than I imagined she would, but this is the first time I have seen her perform. Again, there was a lack of dialogue that made it difficult for director Rupert Sanders to really develop the characters, but everyone did a good job, so I would give it a solid "B." If you are going to the movies this weekend, and you have seen The Avengers and Battleship, go ahead and see it, but don't feel that you need to rush out to catch it, it will play well for a rental.
In the meantime, the exciting, newest trailer for Jeremy Renner's The Bourne Legacy has been released, just keep watching it, there is a lot of repeat material in the beginning, but then it gets better:

And it's raining Channing Tatum in the newest Magic Mike trailer you can view here (I couldn't find a version I could download, sorry). Also, a very interesting new House At the End Of the Street trailer:

While I am not particularly looking forward to Prometheus, here is the newest trailer for the film's release next week:

And due out at Christmas (it will be competing with The Great Gatsby) will be Les Miserables:

The new sci-fi film Looper starring Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt has released this new poster (below). I am working on the Snow White and the Huntsman post, hope to get it up tonight!

Hollywood's Political Scorecard: the Capitalists & Socialists

Many will say that a movie is only a movie, nothing more; I say, the movies are everything, literally, because it takes everything within a culture at a specific moment in history to make that movie. A film contains a story, and a story contains all the morals, values, norms, taboos, anxieties and dreams of the audience it aspires to reach. If films didn't properly reflect what society thinks and feels, there wouldn't be any films, there wouldn't be any art at all if art wasn't capable and supposed to do that exact task and no one has greater influence than Hollywood: from news about celebrities we are constantly bombarded with, to the discs we slip into our home media players in the privacy of our homes, Hollywood has an enormous role in shaping our opinions and beliefs, are ideals and our dreams.

Today Snow White and the Huntsman is released world wide. I am catching the earliest showing of it today, will be posting my initial reactions to the film via Twitter and desperately trying to get my post of it up tonight. (I have cleared the day to do just this so hopefully it will be successful). I would like to take a moment to pause and tally up where Hollywood stands regarding the political debate of November's elections. I predicted that 2012's historical significance as an election year would be important to the film industry and I was accurate in that; what I so happily failed to realize was how many major Hollywood productions would buck the trend in supporting the liberal agenda of the current political administration, so let's just pause to take a look at the political landscape in Hollywood.

Films that can be considered as occupying a pro-capitalist/pro-America or politically conservative agenda:
The Artist: it won Best Picture at the Oscars, but most importantly, it bucked the idea that artists--specifically film makers, should not be a part of the capitalist system. Making the case that the innovations of "talkie" films was for the best, in spite of some actors from the silent era being unemployed, The Artist successfully bonds art to the economy for the good of the industry and the individuals (the country as well).
Mirror, Mirror, Battleship, The Chernobyl Diaries, Men In Black III, Gone, Man On a Ledge, John Carter, The Grey, A Better Life, The Raven Moneyball, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (post is forthcoming), Act Of Valor, Lockout.

The Avengers: clearly a capitalist film, and a record breaking film, Iron Man's billionaire Tony Stark not only saves the "ship of state" by using his knowledge to fix the engines of the SHIELD organization after they have been attacked by alien invaders, but then risks his life to to get them running again. Tony  risks his life again to avert "the attack on Manhattan" and deliver the nuclear bomb to the attackers of New York City, rather than let New York's financial landscape suffer the kind of fate all New York suffered in 9/11.

"A ghost story for the minimum wage" lets us know that when we fail in being competitive in the market, we are locked into minimum wage jobs, equivalent to death for us because we fail in driving ourselves to improve and develop ourselves to do better, for our own ends and those of society. Claire being condemned to "stay in the inn" as one of the ghosts haunting it is literally an "unnatural state" (the dead should die, not go on living after the die) just as the inn taking care of her instead of her taking care of the inn.

The Innkeepers: because of references within the film, and Claire obviously having no skills to do anything, and the fact that she dies (which is a punishment in art), I have to say that Claire going from being "an innkeeper" to the inn "keeping her" is a similarity of the state "keeping someone" in terms of providing care for them; that being an "undead" is as unnatural a state of being as the state taking care of you is. 

Yes, some images are worth a thousand words, but not the billions it took to bail out the auto industry; Project X's accurate indication of the auto industry's luxury accommodations courtesy of the Obama administration, courtesy of tax payers, can't be summarized any other way.

In 1726, English author Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels, one of the greatest satires ever penned; Project X is of the same, gross and disturbing caliber, depicting the irresponsible behavior of the Democratic "Party" in the artificial means of "floating the economy" (the dog tied up with balloons), mortgages "under water" (the neighborhood being torched than flooded by helicopters above) the disrespect towards Republicans and Tea Party members asking for the accountability that Obama promised in his campaigns (the neighbor confronting Costa about the party going on and the damage they are doing).

Just as it is unnatural for dogs to fly, so it's unnatural to create artificial "floaters" to stimulate the economy and keep it floating because doing that never ever works, as we have discovered billions of dollars later. When Thomas' father tells his son he didn't think he had it in him to throw that kind of a party, most of America didn't think the government didn't have it in them to wreck this kind of destruction upon their own country.

The liberal media's refusal to accurately report news (Dax the camera man only video taping the neighbor punching the "child" in the face and not the fact that the neighbor had been tasered by him first), is also taken up , as well as the plethora of homosexuality, especially among the young females constantly kissing each other and taking their clothes off at the drop of a hat (the fake "freedom" supported by pro-abortion Feminists in the Democratic "Party") and finally, if all of this isn't enough, Costa stealing condoms from a store because "he shouldn't have to pay" for his own birth control; the irony is, at the end of the film, there are three paternity tests against him, so the condoms didn't work anyway.

Films that are socialist/liberal/pro-Obama or anti-capitalist:
The Descendants, The Three Musketeers, The Vow, The Hunger Games, Dark Shadows, The Pirates! Band Of Misfits. This is a rare time when I will bow to pressure from others, but everyone insists that The Ides Of March is a pro-Democrat film, so I list it here, even thought I can't (upon examination of it) see how, in any way, it supports the Democrats because of the issues of abortion, the trade unions, the affairs with the interns, etc.

The destructive monsters unleashed by the Democrats' behavior that threatens the world.

There are films such as The Lorax, The Wrath Of the Titans, The Secret World of Arrietty and The Dictator which seem to rise above the political squabbles and make conservative commentary on where the country is headed, but aren't necessarily taking sides. What about a film like Margin Call? Can't that be considered anti-capitalist? Many would consider the greed-driven decisions and unethical behavior depicted in the film to be a fabulous case against capitalism; in the history of film, however, this has always been done. Capitalism, we all know, works in cycles, and there are bad people in the world taking advantage of other people; the problem isn't with the system, however, but the fault lies with the people within the system, spending more than $80,000 on prostitutes is a great example, because that kind of behavior wouldn't go away with socialism, but it can be brought out in art and, hopefully, corrected.

Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr. from Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows. Anti-capitalist? It would be easy to argue that if Moriarty didn't have all that money, he wouldn't be able to start the war; I've learned, however, that just because an argument is easy to make, doesn't mean it's a good argument. It's the socialists in the beginning of the film who are doing all the bombings and destroying everything, and Moriarty's designs to wage war are the typical vehicle for morality lessons by which film usually engages the audience in an encouragement to do good, not evil.

What about films coming up?
Both GI Joe Retaliation and Jack the Giant Killer have been moved to release next year; pity, they won't be nearly as relevant. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter will most likely be a pro-socialist film. The Amazing Spider Man... I can't say, but if I had to wager a bet, it would be that it will be pro-socialist, even though the Obama administration wouldn't bail me out for the faulty gamble I took but I still have to pay my tax dollars to bail out Wall Street. Prometheus, being released next week will probably be a lot like Avatar, watered-down and liberal.
The big splash still to be made is The Dark Knight Rises.

I desperately want to see the billionaire hero Bruce Wayne put down the rabble rousing against the country but there is a good chance that most of the footage we see in the trailer isn't in the film; that's just a guess. Mr. Christopher Nolan, the director, is very secretive, justifiably so, but I don't think anything substantial can be deduced from the trailers. We do have a hint, albeit, not much of one, from his earlier film Inception. The purpose of Dom (Leonardo DiCaprio) doing the last inception job was to incite Robert Fischer Jr (Cillian Murphy) to break up his father's company so Saito (Ken Watanbe) could compete and not go out of business. The vast majority of good capitalists are against monopolies, it prohibits competition and reduces consumer choice and power; the question is, is that why Mr. Nolan wrote the script as such?
We'll soon find out.
Eat Your Art Out,
The Fine Art Diner

What Is 'Freedom?' Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

(This review is for the book; the review for the film, which I thought was actually better than the book, but far more socialist is Radical Socialism: Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter & the Question Of American History). Please permit me to preface, at the behest of a reader, that I am completely willing to suspend my disbelief to enjoy this story; however, all art is an expression of the society from which it comes and the unconscious needs of its individuals; it's art's duty to express those needs and, while I had hoped the vampires would symbolize the "blood-sucking politicians" in Washington, not just anyone and everyone who has made money in this country. I This preview is for the book, not the upcoming film with the same title:

Abraham Lincoln.
It would be easy to forget the president were he not the quintessential icon of the American dream: self-taught, poor, raised on the frontier, the self-made president was known as Honest Abe, "With charity towards all, and malice towards none." When I saw the initial trailers for the upcoming film Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, based on Seth Grahame-Smith's novel (who also penned the socialist screenplay Dark Shadows), these were the popular conceptions of Lincoln I believed a successful novel would draw upon, and the vampires he hunted would be symbolic of the corrupt politicians sucking the country dry of honor, leadership and resources for their own self-advancement, contrary to Honest Abe's devotion and self-sacrifice to keeping the union one at a time--like today--that the country is so divided on issues.
I was wrong.

If I were a Democrat--which I am not--as a woman, I would be feeling really persecuted by the Democratic Party. On the back cover, Lincoln holds the head of a female vampire; he kills only two female vampires in the book, against the multitude of male vampires, so why was a female's head singled out to be on the cover? Again, I am neither a Feminist nor a Democrat, but this seems to be one more hypocritical stance on the "war on women" Democrats claim Republicans are waging on women when it appears that male Democrats really are the ones who despise women. The first vampire Lincoln goes to hunt in the book is a woman, an elderly woman, who has been stealing children and killing them. This is an interesting image because women are meant to give life to children, not take life from children, rather like pro-abortion women in the Democratic party. Lincoln isn't strong enough to overcome her, however, and she nearly kills him. Symbolically, we could say that old woman was America, the "mother land" that had aged (like the old woman in the bath tub in The Shining) and the children she was killing was the "future generations of Americans" who would have prospered in the land, but the land took their life instead of giving them their life (they became slaves to capitalists instead of becoming their own "masters"). This is important for us to consider because this is the language that Democrats/socialists/liberals are re-writing history in, the identity of the country that they are re-casting to fit their own agendas; do you agree with this as being an accurate assessment of American history?

The book touts that it's the "real history" of President Lincoln, and I hope by now I have adequately proven that I am pro-art, and my posts of last fall demonstrate the diversity of vampire iconography and the importance to which I attach to the fanged beasts in cultural depictions. On the first page of his novel, Grahame-Smith lists as a "Fact," that "For over 250 years, between 1607 and 1865, vampires thrived in the shadows of America. Few humans believed in them." I believe in them. I don't believe that I will walk down the street and be attacked by a blond Brad Pitt-esque sorrowful vampire, but I know there are humans who have the traits of "sucking the blood" of others and living off humans and the morphed creatures of the night serve to remind us how easily we lose our humanity and what we become when we do.  That's not what Mr. Grahame-Smith believes, however.
He believes that if you have money, you are a vampire.

This image captures the "reality" the book presents best for someone who hasn't read it. Yes, that is supposed to be a photograph of writer Edgar Allan Poe and Abraham Lincoln. The poor quality reflected in this photo-shopped image reflects the poor quality of the theories of the book. I mentioned in my post, The Raven & the Raccoon: Edgar Allan Poe & Karl Marx that both Democrats and Republicans would be appropriating the image of the great American writer for their own sides, and this "photograph" is proof.  Like Men In Black III citing Andy Warhol in the relationship between capitalism and art, The Raven created a strong opposition between socialism and capitalism and the role consumer tastes--even when they are wrong--serve in the production of great art. Not everyone is meant to be an artist, not everyone can write, not everyone can make a film; that's called "life" not the French Revolution and killing everyone so you can spend your life writing mediocrity. If one is truly called to be an artist, in whatever medium, you suffer for it, you make the choices to be that and nothing else and that's how it is, unless you are Mr. Grahame-Smith and you believe it should be handed to you, which he obviously does so he can produce art as low in quality as this "image" of Poe and Lincoln. In the film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, the figure of Poe has been "axed" out of the story (there is a Harriet Tubman, however, who does not appear in the book) but the reason why Poe appears in the book is because, Grahame-Smith reasons, someone who wrote about "so much darkness" must have known something of vampires. Great logic,...

Having said that, Grahame-Smith's novel suggesting that it is the "real history" of President Lincoln is a terrible, terrible lie; Lincoln never did nor would he ever, advocate the anti-capitalist sentiment Grahame-Smith does by his vampires. Grahame-Smith proposes the Lincoln was a socialist, which he wasn't, ever, and that Lincoln went around busting up capitalists, which he never did, and that Lincoln hated the founding fathers and the founding purpose of this country, which he didn't. I believe completely in the license of art, but I also know that there are such things as blatant lies, and in this election year, one of the greatest Americans in our history has been given a plastic surgery to make him unrecognizable and it's important to know how and why this has been done and it basically revolves on how Democrats and Republicans define "freedom."

Auction Negro Slaves, a truly terrible thing. The man and woman, owners of the establishment outside Atlanta, Georgia, and hence the sponsors of the slave auctions, are vampires, according to the book, and you can tell by the way they wear the dark glasses to protect their eyes from the sun. I would absolutely agree with Mr. Grahame-Smith that the DEMOCRATS who supported slavery and slave auctions, and started the Civil War, breaking off from the Union and electing a phony government, are absolutely vampires that Abraham Lincoln bravely fought off. While some in the book fit this description, it's not just because they were pro-slavery that these auction house owners are vampires; they are vampires because they have money. Mr. Grahame-Smith casually skips over what won the Civil War--the Union's capitalist industries, the factories, the money, the railroads built by companies that could ship goods and soldiers to battlefields--and suggests that the war was won simply because it was won, not having to do anything with the very reality of this country that he wants to do away with. Democrats tend to not like history, and the Civil War (and the role Democrats played in tearing up the country) is one reason why.

First, how do we establish that this is pro-socialist and the vampires are symbolic of capitalists? Two aspects of the story lay claim to this perspective. First, the main character in the book is a struggling writer and his situation is:
I'd always known I'd end up in the store after graduation, just like I had every summer since I was fifteen. I wasn't family in the strictest sense, but Jan and Al had always treated me like one of their kids--giving me a job when I needed it most; throwing me a little pocket money while I was away at school. The way I saw it, I owed them six solid months, June through Christmas. That was the plan. Six months of working in the store by day, and working on my novel nights and weekends. Plenty of time to finish the fist draft and give it a good polish. Manhattan was only an hour and a half by train, and that's where I'd go when I was done, with four or five pounds of unsolicited, proofread opportunity under my arm. Goodbye, Hudson Valley. Hello, lecture circuit.
Nine years later I was still in the store. (page 5)
Then he goes onto complain about people who come into his store, and what he's had to do to keep the store going.

The slaves Grahame-Smith hopes will revolt are the middle-class people who will be-head their employers.  The reason why all the vampires are rich in the Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is because, after taking the blood from their victims, they then take all their property, too, which is supposed to stir up in all of us a riot like the French Revolution. What does this presuppose? What does Grahame-Smith have to rely upon to build up this kind of thesis? That none of us have free will, that we are indeed slaves and trapped. This is the reason why, in Dark Shadows, Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) hypnotizes the ship captain (Christopher Lee) to get him to come work for him instead of Angelique (Eva Green), Grahame-Smith sincerely believes that the ship captain doesn't have a will of his own, that he's only a puppet to be bought by the highest bidder, even after the captain refuses Barnabas' offer out of "loyalty."  On a similar vein, the main character in the book, the one at the five-and-dime, (weep, weep, sob, sob) he doesn't have free will either: he was forced into working at the store, he was forced into getting married, he was forced into taking on a mortgage, and because of his will being enslaved by wealthy capitalists, he can't come up with any idea for a new novel better than To Mock a Killing Bird.  Just as Seth Grahame-Smith's books are parasites on truly great people (Abraham Lincoln) and a truly great great book (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) so he wants to be a financial parasite as well, because he can't make it on his own merit, and so everyone else should have to suffer for that. "Beheading," as long-time readers of this blog will surely remembers, carries another connotation: the removal from government. The government is the "head" of a country, so to behead someone is to remove them from a place of leadership.

Okay, I feel for the guy, but it's called "LIFE." (Mine hasn't worked out, either, by the way, but I'm not going to go to the richest neighborhood in town, massacre everyone, take their stuff and claim they were vampires). Next example, Lincoln's mother is killed by a money-lender that Lincoln's father couldn't pay back, so the money-lender sucked the blood out of Lincoln's aunt, uncle and mother in consequence citing his inhuman actions as "business" to deter others from taking advantage of him. These are the two reasons why vampires symbolize anyone with money, not just the slave owners on plantations in the south. The slave owners in the book aren't the historical slave owners we think of say, in Gone With the Wind, rather, the slave owners are employers everywhere in the country today, and we are being called to storm into places of employment and literally behead them, then steal their wealth so we can all become mediocre writers and thinkers like Mr. Grahame-Smith.

Yes, another fake photograph, just like the fake book. Jefferson Davis, DEMOCRAT and president of the Confederacy that broke away from the Union, and John Wilkes Booth, actor and assassin of President Lincoln that Mr. Grahame-Smith claims was a vampire.

It's important to point out--I just LOVE THIS ONE--that everyone who has money is a vampire, but not all vampires deserve to go to hell as quickly as some of them, and since Mr. Grahame-Smith and Mr. Tim Burton (the producer) are obviously rich because of capitalism, they would be included in this category, so since they are vampires with hearts, so to speak, when we rise up in a French Revolutionary style revolt, we shouldn't behead them or take THEIR MONEY because they are really on our side... we wouldn't know we were enslaved if it weren't for them telling us we are slaves...

Another fake photograph, this one of the White House during Lincoln's presidency, and vampires that were hired to protect him so he could bring the "bad vampires" to justice. This is like all the rich socialists who support Obama because they want their rich capitalists rivals to be taken out so they won't have anymore competition. And the book supports this. At one point, Lincoln does question why Henry, his mentor that is a vampire, tells Lincoln who the vampires are that Lincoln should be killing, but then Lincoln decides it isn't important, just as long as he is killing vampires. Lincoln leaves vampire killing for a while, but then takes it up again later.

These are important points because the tagline of the film is "Are you a patriot or a vampire?" Originally, I believed with all my heart that this tagline demonstrated the film would be capitalist and pro-America, because those are the principles upon which America was founded, and to be a patriot means that you love your country and the principles it stands for and practices, not to be a person that wants to take an axe and destroy everything about your country, including the constitution, and being inhumanly dis-respectful of the founding fathers (The Gabbler has the audacity to suggest Lincoln was gay).  IF this film proves to be socialist, then that's one more way Sacha Cohen Baron's The Dictator proves accurate about Obama's Party, because that will be a re-doing of the political language of the country.

A shot from the film, to be released June 22; this doesn't happen in the book. It's possible that Mr. Bekmambetov, the director, has more influence over the subtle arrangements of the film's story that will switch it from being a socialist vendetta to being a truly patriotic film; funny if it would take someone born in the former USSR to show Americans what patriotism is all about... no, it wouldn't be funny, it would be a thoroughly revolting day, but at least he could do it.

Note, please, that I said "If," there is a chance that, in spite of Mr. Grahame-Smith's socialism and advocacy of mediocrity, and (producer's) Tim Burton's blatant hypocrisy over the very system that has permitted him to fulfill his dreams and become wildly successful, there is a chance that the film will not be as bad as the book; why? Director Timur Bekmambetov was born in the Soviet Union, there weren't any theaters in which to show films after the collapse of the communist state; perhaps Mr. Bekmambetov has half a brain to know that his financial success wasn't from socialism but from capitalism and he'll support that. Here's a quick featurette:

What still has me worried?
Please note at 0:52, when "Abe" turns around and there's a vampire standing there, and Abe throws him up, the sign on the building the vampire hits says "BARTS SHIPPING," which refers to the money-lender (from the book who was named Barts) that sucked Lincoln's mother dry. The identity of the manufacturer is retained, meaning it will probably still be anti-capitalist. In some cases, I can absolutely agree with an anger about millionaires and billionaires who don't do more public works with their surplus of wealth (I would love to see celebrities banning together to help the Katrina victims, the way they all did to help the 9/11 victims, with so man of them donating $1 million, that was great! but they rarely do that and that's flaws in human nature), there are--without a doubt--people in the capitalist world who are so driven by greed that they will do anything to anyone to make a buck. The collapse on Wall Street is perfect testimony to this; but what president was it who ordered the Wall Street bail out?

From the book: a skull of a vampire fighting for the Confederacy. I wonder if Grahame-Smith ever attended an American history lecture in his life, and knows who it was that started the Civil War?

In the book, this question is really the thesis of the socialist agenda: "Why would any man conspire against himself? Why would any man hasten his own enslavement?" (emphasis in the original, page 270). From a capitalist view, we can say that socialism is enslavement because the government is given total control over all individuals in society and there is no mobility, upwards or downwards, there is no choice of job, there is no freedom of selection. In socialism, the enslavement comes from having to have a job, from having to work, to having to actually be good at something and be responsible for yourself rather than have the government taking care of you. These are imperative concepts, because this is exactly what the civil war in this country is about right now and what will be decided in November. They are also patriotic concepts because we are now--thanks to Mr. Grahame-Smith--arguing about what this country was founded upon, who founded it and why (because there was too much government control in countries they were fleeing, there was no personal freedom and people wanted to be responsible for themselves and have a chance at mobility, that's why). If you will, please watch this latest trailer, not from a realistic perspective, rather, as if it's anti-capitalist and pro-socialist:

Liberals have many times accused me of seeing only what I want to see in film interpretation, but to save my life, at this point in time, having read the book (which, thankfully, I bought second-hand so as not to contribute to Mr. Grahame-Smith's accumulation of wealth so he doesn't become a vampire like the ones he wants murdered) I just can't see how there is going to be a lick of sense in it. Additionally, at the end, Abraham Lincoln has been raised from the dead and has become a vampire. Yes, Abraham Lincoln has been raised by the dead by the very political party that hated him so much, they seceded from the Union and started the Civil War, and have turned him inside-out against what he really believed and stood for.
God help us.

Men In Black III & the Victory Of the Cold War

1969.
It was a make-or-break year for America, a year when we would either win the Space Race against the Soviet Union (then Communist) or lose it, and possibly lose everything else, too, because if we had lost the race to the moon--an important plot sequence in the film--the Soviets would have been in a dominant position to potentially invade America and start the push towards socialism that Men In Black III makes us fully aware of by highlighting the socialist invasion we are dealing with today. As the credits song at the end reminds us this Memorial Day weekend, "To understand the future we have to go back in time," and that's exactly what films such as The Avengers, Battleship and The Chernobyl Diaries are chiming in as well.

In many ways--if not all of them--the audience is asked to identify with Agent J (Will Smith) because there are things going on in the film that we might not understand unless someone explains it to us, for example, Agent O (Emma Thompson) gives a eulogy about Zed and talks in a high-pitched, fast, alien dialect that is in-comprehensible; once more, dear readers, this is a perfect example of "noise" as an artistic medium to alert us the viewers that something is going to be said that we aren't entirely going to be able to understand, but they are going to say it anyway; why? Why bother if we aren't going to understand? Because just like Agent J finally coming to realize why his father couldn't be there for him as a child, we will come to realize what the film is trying to say, even if it isn't immediately accessible to us right now, it will be at a later time when we can use it for a greater purpose.

When the film first opens, we see a pair of women's black boots walking, and a highly done up woman carrying a pink birthday cake; we find out that "Boris the Animal" has been locked up for 40 years and his girlfriend has brought him the cake; we also discover that Boris has only one arm. Feet, as we know, symbolize the will because feet take us where we need to go just as our will directs where we want to go, so that Boris' girlfriend (as she is officially called) has her feet in black shoes, zipped up tight and Boris' name tattooed on her back, we know she is completely devoted to him and getting him out of the moon-based prison. The question is, who is this woman, really? And the answer depends upon who Boris the Animal is really.

The two guards behind her do a scan to insure there's "nothing inside the cake" and the guard says, "She's clean, well, not clean, you know" and laughs as we can be certain that something is certainly "dirty" about her. The way she is dressed suggests that she is an alien prostitute (or worse). Because Boris comes from the extinct Boglodite race, and the guards make it clear that Boris' visit from his girlfriend is not a conjugal visit, we can deduce that she is there to beget a child with Boris, i.e., the "child" of a new future in which the Boglodites take over the earth as originally intended, just as socialism/communism always intended to take over the US. The cake she carries, while it registers as 99% organic hides something evil; is there something in the US today that looks like a gift (entitlement programs, free birth control) but is actually hiding evil (increasing government dependency/control)? Boris' girlfriend is anyone "helping to free" socialism from the stigmas of failure and corruption in which history and experience has imprisoned it.

Seeing that Boris the Animal has only one arm, and hasn't had a visitor in 40 years, we are tempted to ask, what happened 40 years ago? In 1972, American chess player Bobby Fischer defeated Soviet champion "Boris" Spassky  to become the first US World Champion Chess player. Arms symbolize strength, and Boris the Animal losing his arm invokes that loss of prestige. Later in the film, Boris will attack Agent J, Agent J will go back in time to re-do the sequence, and come back to re-do the encounter with Boris; because Agent J uses a "creative interpretation" of the possibilities of time travel, he can use it to his advantage, which is what game theory is all about. Like Bobby Fischer, Agent J has the "better moves" that kills his opponent and we ourselves need to remember "moves" because we are in the exact same political battle this year that MIB3 illustrates for us in the film.

Because he has lost his strength (his arm) Boris requires a second person--an assistant-- to help him escape, that he can then easily discard (Boris lets his "girlfriend" slip out into outer space and death once he's finished with her). Boris does this with Obadiah, one of the prisoners who gave him the secrets to time travel in exchange for Boris helping him escape; Boris kills him instead. This is the first of four references to Iron Man, because Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) had Obadiah (Jeff Bridges) as a leader in his company who betrayed him, just as Obadiah in MIB3 betrays humanity by helping Boris the Boglodite escape to destroy the earth. Obadiah was an Old Testament prophet whose name meant "servant of Yahweh" and is used to name these two characters (from Iron Man and MIB3) to denote who they did not serve.

Throughout the film, Boris the Animal keeps saying, "Let's agree to disagree." Why? It's a disguise, essentially positing that two differing modes of thoughts can exist simultaneously. When Agent J kills Boris the Animal (repeating this line back to Boris who has said it all throughout the film), it's clear that what Boris stands for and what Agent J fights and sacrifices for, are mutually exclusive, only one of them can exist, and we have to remember that, because either the traditional American way will prevail in this country, or the new socialist threat invading our government will prevail and we have to decide which it will be.

To finish killing off the guards preventing him from getting out of his prison on the moon (rather like Lockout with Guy Pearce released earlier this year) Boris says, "Let's open a window" and, blasting a hole into the prison walls directly into outer space, all the guards get sucked out, including Boris' girlfriend (pictured above). Why is this important? Just as Boris' eyes are always covered in dark glasses, and everything getting sucked out the "window," Boris/socialism is incapable of reflecting. The eyes and windows are both symbolic of the soul's ability to mediate upon itself, and Boris mis-uses the window to get rid of his opponents and keeps his eyes covered so he doesn't have to see himself. Later, when the future Boris meets up with the past Boris, they get into an argument and nearly kill each other, and that's an effective symbol of the brand of socialism today meeting up with the socialism of the Soviet-era. Like the aliens (symbolic of socialists) in Battleship, Boris has human features, but he's clearly an animal, meant to alert us to the distinction between looking like a human and being a human (we see this again with Wu the restaurant owner).  The distinction is important because we are being tricked into the government's policies that look like they are supposed to help the country, but are in fact disabling the economy.

MIB3 is clearly saying, we can't--on the political level--just say that socialists and capitalists disagree, we can't just lock up Boris the Animal again like Agent K did in 1969; Boris the Animal has to be killed, just like socialism, and regardless of some people thinking it's just a matter of taste, thought or orientation, MIB3 is saying that Boris the Animal--and what he symbolizes--is as much a genuine threat to the life of this country as to the life of Agent K himself, and it's not sufficient to just cut of his arm and disable his strength; he (socialism) must be completely killed, terminated, destroyed. When Boris goes back in time to kill Agent K, that is socialism today going back trying to re-write history but we, like Agent J, have to be ready to protect and defend what we love and believe in.

Isn't this an interesting pose? Who else do we see striking this position with a weapon coming out of his hand that is a part of his body? Iron Man.Why would film makers of Men In Black III want to invoke Iron Man II? Because Tony Stark confronted another Russian threat in that film, Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), the second of four references to Iron Man. It's imperative that, unlike Sir Roger Moore 007-James Bond days, Russians are not the enemy being invoked in these films, rather communism/socialism is the enemy dressed in the Soviet-era guise that many in the audience will recognize (the same is done with the recently released The Raven with John Cusack: Edgar Allan Poe's villain is named Ivan, a common Russian name, who invokes a communist threat in that film). In MIB3, Boris has a scorpion/crawdad-like animal that stays in his hand, but can dislodge and cause havoc as well as Boris being able to release darts to kill his enemies. Would you rather have Iron Man's arc-reactor power coming out of your hand, or that gross animal? The difference in the weapons is a way of drawing upon the differences between what the Soviet-era "accomplished" and what the MIB3 and Iron Man 2 both have arcs (the third of four references): MIB3 has an "arc shield" that protects the earth from invasion--much like Ronald Reagan's Star Wars program from the 1980s--and Iron Man of course has the arc reactor which is the source of Tony's power that stabilizes his heart. Both of these "arcs" are also "arks," that is,capitalism is a vehicle (like the boat of Noah's ark) that both takes us where we need to be in terms of technological advancements and protects us from the kind of destruction experienced by Soviet-era socialism/communism. The comparison to Iron Man's technology and Boris' demonstrates--like The Chernobyl Diaries--the lack of technological advancement characteristic of socialist/communist states.

In a similar, substantiating vein is Wu's Chinese Restaurant.
Agents K and J get a call that "intestinal worms" have been showing up in customers' stomachs, so they go to investigate and Wu tells the two agents that if they arrest him, since he's Chinese, it's a hate crime, but Wu isn't Chinese, he's an alien, and he's an alien because he's a communist and Wu's throwing out at them the US law to protect himself from a "hate crime" is typical of liberal thought in the US and is used by socialists to counter arguments from conservatives against socialism (they don't actually argue for socialism, they argue against capitalism).

Wu on the far left and Agent K holding up an alien fish being served to earth people. Agent K is especially upset about this particular fish because he knows from experience that it's a favorite of Boris the Animal's. As in The Dictator, released just last week, the Chinese presence invokes an alien/communist presence and Wu's willingness to help Boris in MIB 3 means the film makers want to alert the audience to the Chinese willingness to take over the US via our debt they keep buying up and Congress keeps racking up, as mentioned in The Dictator. That Agent K is able to sense Boris the Animal's presence because of the food being served means that Boris is a man of appetites (as if looking at his all-molar smile didn't all ready tell us that) and that he is a Boglodite, a rogue race that eats up other planets. This is the dominant trait by which we can understand Boris being symbolic of socialism/communism: he eats up everything, because that was the agenda for socialism, take over every country. Last summer, I posted on the bubblegum pop song Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, and how it's lyrics revealed the difficult position of the United States fighting the war in Vietnam, which and the Eisenhower's view of the domino effect of socialism, one socialist government causing its neighboring country to become socialist, etc., if you would like to read more on it there (please see Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini & the Vietnam War for more).

The "intestinal worms" which Wu's customers have been infected comes from the alien doctrine some people have been "eating up" about the "good" of socialism/communism and which they can't stomach. When Agent K rips off Wu's "skirt" and reveals his alien body underneath, it's the film makers ripping off the facade of Chinese communism to reveal the alien body of doctrine to US voters. This is also the fourth of four references to Iron Man, Iron Man 3 (to be released May 2013): Tony Stark will be going to China to battle Mandarin, his fiercest foe yet. It's not that the Chinese themselves are an enemy, but the socialism/communism we are slowly being fed in the US just as Wu replaces earth fish with alien fish.

One of the alien fish at Wu's Restaurant he's been serving earth people. Again, just as in Battleship and Boris the Animal, the alien has human "features," just as socialism has "acceptable features" but it's really alien. There's another film MIB 3 references through Agent J going to the Roosevelt Hotel, named for President "Teddy" Roosevelt and that film is Man On a Ledge, because it was on the ledge of the Roosevelt that Sam Worthington's character threatened to jump to his death. Just as Roosevelt's views and policies meant to make the American Dream available for a greater number of Americans, he also intended America--specifically the Navy, as in Battleship--to be a world power, which is probably the point of Agent J going to it because if America had not been a world power post WWII, we would have been unable (or at least seriously hindered) to stop communism.

There is an interesting facet of "alien-ness" discussed in the film: models.
When Agents K (Josh Brolin) and J go to Andy Warhol's (Bill Hader) Factory (his art studio) they discover that all models are aliens, and that's pretty accurate, because the way the women treat their bodies is alien to how women are meant to treat their bodies. This also adds an interesting twist on interpreting Warhol's pop art, which was a commentary on how products had become so integral to the daily lives of Americans; now, in MIB 3, the suggestion that Warhol is one of the agents, and the agency has been telling "Warhol" what to paint, recasts the pictures of soup cans and money as those products being available to Americans when they weren't to the rest of the world, and reminding Americans of the high standard of living we enjoy compared to other parts of the world, i.e., those being taken over by socialism.

In the film and in the trailer above, there is an interesting reference to another film being invoked from 1967, In the Heat Of the Night with the great Sidney Poitier. In MIB 3, after "Warhol" calls Agent J dumb ass, Agent J responds that he doesn't have a problem with "pimp-slapping the schznick out of Andy Warhol" and Warhol responds, "What?" Just as Warhol doesn't understand the slang (noise to him) being employed by Agent J, so many audience members won't understand the reference to the film In the Heat Of the Night when officer Virgil Tibbs (Poitier) slaps a prominent member of the Mississippi community.

It's at Warhol's Factory (another reference akin to The Raven's tying the production of art to capitalism, I mean, how many great socialist/communist artists can you name?) that Agents J and K meet up with the most interesting character of the film, Griffin, from one of the planets devoured by the Blogodites (Boris the Animal's alien race) and Griffin wants to help save the world from his planet's fate. He has a unique gift: Griffin can see the future, and not only the future, but all the possible combinations of the future based on different ways that we chose to act on our free will. For example, if K forgets to leave a tip, an asteroid hits the earth.

Agent K in 1969 (Josh Brolin) and Griffin with the green jacket and hat.

Griffin symbolizes an important and culture-shattering aspect of MIB 3 that is also invoked in The Avengers: Chaos theory. Why is this important? Well, chaos as a theory proper completely undermines the understanding of various theories of evolution (Darwinism). Whereas evolution generally states that a species does what they have to in order to survive, and that the strongest or most adaptable survive, Griffin's ability to put the future in terms of people's choice and free will, in terms of this or that happening, reflects what popular culture knows as the Butterfly Effect (please, don't accuse me of dumbing these scientific theories down; MIB 3 knows it has a general lay audience that it is presenting this to, not a committee of paleontologists). Griffin shares this chaos tendency with another major character this summer, Clint Barton, i.e., Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) from The Avengers.

Griffin opens a "window" into history (the opposite of Boris opening the window into outer space) to show Agents K and J the "miracle Mets game" when they were behind all season and then everything worked out perfectly for them to win it all. The continuous reference to "miracle" does not make Griffin a god figure, it's intended to make us god figures, that everything we do with our free will either is for the good of humanity or the destruction of humanity, one decision at a time. Just like Griffin, each of us is given a gift to use for our own good and the good of others, and when we use our gifts for good, we follow God and become as Christ commanded us to become, "Perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect" because our wills are aimed at the goal of love, not self aggrandisement. Griffin shows them the game to increase their faith, because when their faith is increased, they will be able to have a greater commitment to what they need to do to fulfill their mission. This increase of faith is why Agent J is able to see his father dying and not--as he did with Boris--go back in time and be there to deflect the bullet or warn him, but understand the sacrifice and the burden that Agent K would carry as a result. As mentioned above in the (possible) invocation of the famous Bobby vs Boris chess match, the Mets game adds another dimension to the level of game theory being summoned by the film to remind us the viewers of the victory--and all the other victories--that were achieved in this film against socialism/communism so we don't become enticed into believing false accounts of history and, hence, reality, that would make it look as if socialism is really the winning form of government when it's not.

I had wanted to discuss this in my post on The Avengers, but couldn't really decide how it fit in, so just left it out, until I saw Griffin and then I understood a larger trend that both of them signify. Remember in The Avengers how Hawkeye seriously over-aims his target with his arrows, releases his arrow and the target flies right into the path of the arrow, making a direct hit? That's an application of a branch of chaos theory discovered during World War II, that bullets being aimed by anti-aircraft guns on the ground weren't hitting their targets in the air because wind speed and direction, the plane's speed, the gunner's quickness on the trigger, etc., all were variables contributing to a bullet's success in hitting the target in the sky (I know this seems like common sense today, but it had to be discovered in World War II). Why is this important? Like Griffin's (basic) application of the Butterfly Effect, Hawkeye's tracking system are trends of supporting a chaotic universe which undermines the (Darwinist) evolutionary universe which is an atheist universe.

How can I prove this?
Well, in the beginning of the film (included in the trailer above), Agent J "flashes" a group of people to erase their memory of what they had just seen and tells them about their kid winning the gold fish at school and then it was flushed down the toilet and the giant fish being hauled off in the background was the flushed gold fish "evolved" into that creature. That "evolutionary" understanding of the universe is how the film begins, but because of the character of Griffin, and Agent J's own conversion to understanding what happened to his father and American history, the battle is won by a chaotic universe instead of the evolutionary one; why is that important?

Note, please, that in the vicinity of Wu's restaurant, all these people are of Asian descent, where socialist/communist countries are most prevalent. Agent J flashing them and then telling a story to them (as they have no expression on their face or emotional interaction with him) provides an accurate depiction of the government telling people something--specifically about evolutionary process--and people just accepting it. Are we going to be like this?

Socialist and communist governments (to say the very least) discourage religion (they usually prohibit religion and persecute those practicing any religion) because when the state is in total control of the government and the allocation of resources, it wants to be able to decide who should get what and make people do what they want them to do instead of citizens being able to site their "conscious" as a reason for not following the state's mandate (the forced issue of Catholic employers paying for birth control and abortions is the perfect case in point).

Boris the Animal on his motorcycle. Please note how the mechanical object--the motorcycle--is made to have an organic feel about it, the shape and the "scales", the slithering aspect on the handle bars. Like the animal living inside his hand, his motorcycle becomes a part of him because that's what he needs for power, in other words, in his quest to control and dominate others, he sacrifices his won being, making his motorcycle a part of himself by making it organic and making himself like a monster in letting his hand be a home to that scorpion creature. The greater power Boris tries to have, the less of himself he is because he has to sacrifice more and more of himself to get that power, like sacrificing his arm. When K "takes off" Boris' arm, he doesn't slice it off or shot it off, he freezes it off, because that's a reference to the Cold War and the Soviet Union's strength that was lost when we won the race to space.

Socialist and communists advocate, therefore, the evolutionary universe as the proper paradigm, instead of a religious understanding of creation, because evolution leaves no room for a person's soul (we evolved from apes, not the image of God, and apes don't have souls) or God's role in the development of humanity. When we came from animals, we can be treated like animals; if we came from God, we have to be treated like God's children, and socialism doesn't like that. By undermining an evolutionary universe, MIB 3 weakens another weapon of socialism so it can regenerate itself and spread once more.

Agent K (Josh Brolin) and Agent O (Alice Eve, The Raven, playing the younger version of Emma Thompson's Agent O) strapping K into a jet pack suit because they have to get to Cape Canaveral for the Apollo launch and this is the only way to do it in 1969. Agent J makes an interesting statement, that if jet packs were safe, they would have them in the future, and from a capitalist angle, that makes sense. The two agents arrive in Florida without any difficulty, bringing us to a quandary if we look at things solely from a (strict) evolutionary process: why weren't jet packs developed as a dominant mode of transportation? In a chaotic universe, sense can be made of this, that it really posed serious damage except in extreme circumstances to not use them, so they weren't developed for mass production (I am just putting this line of thought out as an example to use), and this simple moment of the film shores up one more aspect against evolutionary perspectives, especially in a region (the economy) where most of us expect to see it and don't have any problems with understanding it as a useful paradigm in that region.

It's not that a chaotic universe includes God, but it doesn't exclude God the way evolutionary processes do (the attempt to explain how man came to be without God). The possibility of understanding a better scientific approach to the creation of the universe (even before I became a Catholic, I never subscribed to any of the camps of Darwin's thought) compatible with America's long held religious affiliations and capitalist program enhances the victory of the Cold War over socialism/communism that those ideologies "alien" to what America has been founded upon and is built upon will always win for individuals and the greater good.

Agent K (Brolin) has decided to put Agent J into a big mind flash "thing" (to erase his entire memory) because Agent J won't tell K why he's there and what he's doing. J is ready to scream out everything he knows for fear of what K is going to do. Are we being put in a similar device today to have our minds and memories erased of what has happened throughout American history? Who benefits, today, from re-writing our history?

In conclusion, Men In Black III, centering the plot around the Apollo launching of putting a man on the moon, intentionally means to remind Americans of who we are and why we are, the victories that we have won and the enemies we have fought against; the story means to teach us that history is a part of us and nothing was accidental and, by knowing our history, we can protect ourselves today, and our future tomorrow.
Eat Your Art Out,
The Fine Art Diner

"Do you have these in the future?" Agent K asks J and no, we don't, and while they work efficiently well (and look totally cool) Men In Black III offers another example of how even our economy doesn't work along the strict likes of "social Darwinism" as it is often called (the survival of the fittest/the best) rather, there is more of a story to why or why not something doesn't get developed, like the faulty baseball that is thrown during the "miracle" Mets game, which had to do more with the tanner's wife than a great hit or throw. This is the human element in history, and an element that we can never forget.