Trapeze Americano: the Capitalist Circus & Madagascar 3

Don't do what I did, please, and expect from Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted a show reflecting the trailer; it does have moments of being slightly annoying, however, the film demonstrates the ups and downs of capitalism over the last couple of years in sophisticated array and why it is imperative not to abandon the system. Madagascar 3 does four things extremely well: one, it reminds us what has happened to capitalism the last several years; two, it draws differences between the American and French Revolutions; three, it makes a surprising judgment on what happens in a capitalist system when faith in God is abandoned which leads us into the fourth point, the reasons why the Soviet Union collapsed and how Russia is vital to America today. Yes, this is all in Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted.

This film is very much like a group of immigrants making their way to America, and if they aren't enough for you, then the European Circus they join with should convince you that the American dream is still alive and well in Europe, and that's probably what's meant by Europe's "most wanted": what does Europe most want? A high-standard of living, security, and personal freedom.

The film starts in Africa, and Alex the lion is worried that the penguins, who took off to Monte Carlo, aren't going to come back to Africa to return the gang to their home in New York City. It's Alex's birthday, so the gang formed a mud model of New York City for him: Gloria the hippo becomes the Statue of Liberty, saying, "Give me your huddled masses," (line from the plaque on the statue), there is 5th Avenue and Times Square and the Zoo, their home; what's the point of this? The animals made this from memory, and the exile of the animals is the same as the exile of capitalists; the longing they have for New York City is the longing we have for the traditional American monetary system (please recall, if you will, The Avengers, and how a warhead had been fired at Wall Street but billionaire Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) diverted it and saved Wall Street, i.e., American capitalism).

The penguins, cleaver creatures, made an airplane and flew to Monte Carlo for a "gambling spree." What gambling spree would that be? The Wall Street Crash of 2008, the subject of Margin Call, as well as the greed of corrupt investors such as Bernie Madoff, which prompted films such as The Descendants to call for the end of American capitalism and start socialism (please see Hollywood's Political Scorecard: the Capitalists & Socialists for more). The animals being marooned in the barren grass land of Africa is because New York City is mud, it's not just a model for Alex's birthday, but a sign that--like Alex's nightmare of growing old--capitalism, too, has grown old and is exiled, never to return. Alex decides, however, that it's best to go to Monte Carlo, find the penguins, and force them to return them to NYC.

The penguins in their torn up room in Monte Carlo. They have a pillow fight, one of them ripping open the pillow, feathers flying everywhere and Skipper crying, they are full of baby birds! What does that mean? The humble pillow-stuffing and the guests in the luxury room are the same, birds (i,.e., the upper class) and it's self-destructive to take advantage of the lower-class and think it won't have repercussions on the upper-class, contrariwise is also true.

This is where everything gets really interesting.
The penguins and monkeys have wrecked their room but when we go down to the gambling floor, the monkeys, Phil and Mason, have dressed up like "the King of Versailles" (much more on this below) and are winning all their bets. When Alex sees the Penguins, Skipper asks, "What's New Pussycat?" punning off Alex being a cat (a lion) and the 1965 Peter O'Toole/Woody Allen film of the same name. Why is that important? Peter O'Toole's character plays a womanizer who can't be faithful, even incapable of taking responsibility for his actions at times. Without a doubt, this innuendo and the penguins behavior in wrecking their room demonstrates one of the well-known problems of capitalism: just like Bernie Madoff and Lehman Brothers' unethical actions (to say the least) when greed escalates, capitalism becomes unruly and ugly; that's why there is a need for faith (more on that below).

Alex has a four part plan for Operation: Penguin Extraction: first, get the penguins, then really chew them out for not coming back to get them sooner; then apologize for chewing them out, then get back to New York City. When Alex and Marty the Zebra finally get the penguins to a good spot, Alex asks Marty, where are we in the plan? Marty answers, part three! So Alex immediately apologizes to the penguins, skipping over the beating they deserve. What does this reflect? The Wall Street bailout enacted by the Obama Administration to save those who had brought America into a financial crisis instead of punishing them for poor oversight and a lack of regulation.

Now we can begin the surprising lesson of the film: the differences between the American and French Revolutions. Chantal DuBois is the head of animal control in Monte Carlo and is called in to take care of the threat the gang poses. DuBois, the "crazy" as the penguins call her, is crazy. What do we first see about her? All the "heads" mounted on her wall. What are the French best known for? The French Revolution.  What is the French Revolution best known for? Beheadings. Thousands and thousands were decapitated during the political upheaval, including the "King of Versailles." What DuBois

At times moving like a spider, and other times like a blood-hound, the animal tendencies of DuBois are meant to remind viewers that the Republic of France is officially of no religion, hence, officially, it subscribes to the evolutionary model of the creation of the universe (Darwinism, simply stated but not wholly accurate). Later, when DuBois tries to awaken her injured force, she sings,  Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien, (I Have No Regrets)  made famous by Edith Piaf who was portrayed by Marion Cotillard in La Vie En Rose; in turn, Cotillard also starred in Christopher Nolan's 2010 hit Inception which incorporated the song when the extraction agents have to be woken up. Why is all this important? It counters the evolutionary universe with the chaotic universe. Again, a chaotic universe understands the development of the world in very different terms from evolution which excludes the role/being of God. While chaos does not include God, it does not rule God out in creation. In Madagascar 3, having the French woman DuBois at the inner-most circle of a spiraling set of references based on the song she sings, suggests that the film--along with numerous action sequences--supports a chaotic universe, not the evolutionary one.

While films such as Dark Shadows, The Descendants and The Hunger Games are calling for a French Revolution in the United States to burn down the upper-class and the religious orders, Madagascar 3, however, calls for us to remember why our ancestors and founding fathers chose capitalism as the economic model for America: the freedom to invent. While the intelligent but irresponsible penguins (rather like billionaire Tony Stark of Iron Man fame) are the vehicle (the plane) for the return to New York (the plane crashes and the monkeys working the plane run off because in France, "The labor laws are more lenient and they only work 2 weeks out of the year") it's the re-inventing of the circus from the regular animals (the "middle class") that allows them to fulfill their own dreams and get to America (like the immigrants flocking to Ellis Island). It's the penguins, though, who had the cash to buy (read: invest) the circus so the gang had the chance to get back to America (read: proving that capitalism is still a good working system and needs to be given another chance).

Alex rallying the circus animals to re-invent themselves and helping everyone, like in Moneyball, to understand what their real talent is and use that, not only for greater personal happiness, but for the greater good, as well.

Something quite interesting happens, which brings us to our third point of discussion. King Julien, the lemur, falls in love with Sonya the bear who rides a tricycle. Sonya breaks the tricycle and Julien promises to buy her "something better,"; we see them in Vatican City and Julien kisses the ring of the Pope, stealing the ring off the Pope's hand in his mouth, then Julien and Sonya are on a motorcycle, riding out of a bike shop. Later, the Italian seal lion Stefano tries to pray as Vitaly the Russian tiger is going to do his act and Stefano tries to pray the Hail Mary (uttering Santa Maria, over and over until he can't remember the words and doesn't know what to say) as a prayer to help Vitaly. What does this mean? The "trade in" of faith (the Pope's ring) for material goods (the motorcycle) means that later, when we need God's help, we won't remember how to ask for it (Stefano trying to pray).

Three questions need to be asked about Vitaly the Russian Tiger: first, why does he jump through such small hoops, why does he use olive oil and why don't we see him jump through the hoops? The conditioner which Alex gives to Vitaly helps Vitaly to have a "healthy" coat, that is, the leadership in Russia isn't "greasy" like the olive oil, or going to "burn" the people because of corruption, but the coat has become more natural with the right "cleansing agent" that will help to strengthen it and make it strong.

Catholics will know that Our Lady of Fatima appeared in 1917 asking for prayers for the conversion of Russia. As Stefano is praying, it's at the same moment that Vitaly is trying to "be converted" from not jumping through his hoops anymore to jumping through them again. While Stefano messes up his prayers, he still wants to be able to pray, and Vitaly needs the prayers. Madagascar 3 is suggesting that we need to continue our prayers and that leads us to understanding who Vitaly is and his importance to "the circus."

Vitaly's original act was to jump through super small hoops after dumping olive oil on himself so he could get through, however, we the audience never saw it, just saw him on the other side. The hoops the Russian jumps through symbolizes the "tight squeezes" throughout Russian history that, somehow, they always managed to get through (consider the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the Napoleonic Wars, the October Revolution, World War I and World War II, the reign of Stalin, Chernobyl and then the transfer to a market economy); somehow, Russia always "squeezes by"; why don't we see it? The Iron Curtain hid most of Russia's activities, and they still aren't very trustful today, and that helps to explain why Vitaly dumps flammable olive oil over himself.

Where does olive oil originate? Greece. What is Greece known for? It's debt crisis caused by corrupt government officials hiding the real nature of their spending. Russia has the second most corrupt government in Europe (after Ukraine) and that is reflects part of the reason the country's GDP hasn't grown faster because other countries are simply afraid of the corruption of doing business with Russian officials, hence, when Vitaly pours olive oil (Greece's "greasy political practices") over himself he gets "burned" (the Russian economy lags behind and the people are hurt by the very practice they thought would protect them, the oil). This point is "vital" to make because it reminds us that it's not capitalism that is the cause of Russian economic woes, but their own corrupt leaders.

Why "can only people and penguins drive?" People because we invented cars and we have the necessary intellectual and physical means to do so; penguins because they work together as a team in unison while taking directions, which is why the penguins are so successful. Skipper is a "skipper" of the ship of state (the state of the penguins, at least) and his strong leadership allows each of them to be employed in what their strengths and talents are, as in Moneyball.

But Vitaly is also "vital" to the circus for another reason: the circus symbolizes capitalism in general, and the "trapeze Americano" is the "balancing act" America can do between the upper-classes and the middle-class self-realization (the circus re-inventing itself and getting to America)  and the turn-around in difference between the Soviet Union to Russia is vital to the international community in remembering the successes of what the market economy can do:
Since the turn of the 21st century, higher domestic consumption and greater political stability have bolstered economic growth in Russia. The country ended 2008 with its ninth straight year of growth, averaging 7% annually between 2000 and 2008. Real GDP per capita, PPP (current international $) was 19,840 in 2010. Growth was primarily driven by non-traded services and goods for the domestic market, as opposed to oil or mineral extraction and exports. The average nominal salary in Russia was $640 per month in early 2008, up from $80 in 2000. In the end of 2010 the average nominal monthly wages reached 21,192 RUR (or $750 USD), while tax on the income of individuals is payable at the rate of 13% on most incomes. Approximately 13.7% of Russians lived below the national poverty line in 2010 significantly down from 40% in 1998 at the worst point of the post-Soviet collapse. Unemployment in Russia was at 6% in 2007, down from about 12.4% in 1999. The middle class has grown from just 8 million persons in 2000 to 55 million persons in 2006 (Wikipedia).

Towards the end, the gang goes back to the zoo and Alex, the lion and "king" that DuBois wants beheaded (read: French Revolution), is about to get sawed in two. The circus animals that the gang has parted ways with have the choice of going to help Alex and the others or seeing to their own circus. The motto throughout the film is, "Circus sticks together," and when one of the animals suggests that Alex and the others were never really circus, Vitaly the Russian Tiger responds, "That's Bolshevik!" (as a play on the phrase "That's bullsh**!") and he's right: the circus, again, is a symbol for how capitalism works globally, and Vitaly saying that for him to not come to the aid of his capitalist friends is Bolshevik is Bolshevik. Skipper the penguin says, "I never thought I would say this on American soil, but the Russkie's right!" and that's because, by virtue of re-inventing himself, Vitaly can make the call that capitalists look out for each other, and that brings the penguins in line, too.

What got the gang and the circus to America, besides the clever re-inventing of themselves to be opposite the Cirque du Soleil (an all-human circus) to be an all animal circus, is the American investor looking to offer the circus a contract-tour through America if they can impress him. It's a great shot when Phil and Mason, dressed as the King of Versailles, stands beside the American investor with the deed between them in an obvious statement that America won't do to our upper-classes what the French Revolution did to theirs; but there's another reason for that as well.

Whether it's Gloria the hippo on the tightrope or Marty the Zebra being launched through the air, or Alex the lion on the trapeze, these animals are flying in a clear indication of "upward mobility," i.e., they are not bound by social structures the way a solid gold airplane is bound by the laws of physics to be unable to fly (the penguins want to be a solid gold airplane, not only revealing frivolity, but that there is a law of physics which contradicts capitalism's law of social and class mobility). The animals flying not only demonstrates how all of us in America can "reach for the stars," but also actually attain it.

In conclusion, Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted steps up to the plate to bat for capitalism. Every aspect of the film contributes to a anti-socialist agenda by showing honestly showing us the faults with capitalism and how it got in the state it's in (the penguins gambling spree) but how it can not only still work, but is the desirable state for America. I know I laughed more than the kids did, but just because it's an animated work, it's definitely one for adults, imparting a valuable lesson for us all.

Madagascar 3 Is Excellent!

Just saw Madagascar 3 last night and cannot contain my enthusiasm for the thoroughly pro-capitalist film! Fabulous and sophisticated, I'm sure I laughed more than the kids in the audience because I was surprised at the blatant supports of capitalism and the creatively woven-historical references about the Soviet Union-Russia conversion, as well as the comparisons between the American and French Revolutions! If you are wanting to take the kids to something, this is it, but like I said, smart enough for adults, the penguins are great! I am working on that post, but I also just realized there are quite a few comments that I need to address, so I am working on that as well!

Rock Of Ages: Correction

I am not going to be looking for what I thought in this week's new release Rock Of Ages: there have been so many good films being released, I haven't given this the thought it deserves.  What's the vehicle of the film? The Bourbon Room is shutting down and "Stacee Jaxx" is their only hope of staying open. This relationship between art and money was seen in The Artist (which won the coveted Oscar for Best Picture last year), The Raven with Edgar Allan Poe and Men In Black III (with Andy Warhol's role).

Catherine Zeta-Jones' character is running for mayor of Los Angeles. This mixing of politics and religion is going to be the definition of what the "Rock Of Ages" for America is: were we founded on religion or capitalism? This is a good, strong diametrical opposition going, but there is probably going to be a wake up call for Stacee Jaxx and the lifestyle he's been living.

Underneath the noise and the bad hairstyles, we should be looking for money: who is making it, how, what is being done with it and why (please see the picture below). What is being sold? Music, i.e., art, and how is that being portrayed by the film? Is the money ruining Stacee Jaxx, so we should do away with capitalism so everyone is equally poor and not ruined? Or is money and power ruining the church lady running for mayor? On the sideline, but still in full-play, is sexuality and what happened to our sexual identities in the 1980's and 1990's, not only in terms of promiscuity, but the gender break-downs between male and female. I am suddenly looking forward to this very much! Regardless of which side it comes out on, this is a great example of how art is meant to increase our discussions in society about what is taking place and why!

What are they doing? The books.

Trailers: Django Unchained, Ice Age, 360, Wreck It Ralph, Flight

Here is the latest batch of new trailers; top of the list is Quentin Tarantino's latest, Django Unchained due out Christmas Day:

Due out in July is the fourth installment of Ice Age: Continental Drift:

Wreck It Ralph from Disney is being released in November; I have some instinct issues with the Ice Age trailer and this one, but I am going to save them for now:

Denzel Washington's newest flick, Flight, due out in November, may not be in time for the election, however, we can understand the symbols now. If you take the airplane to be the economy (which was done in the Liam Neeson thriller The Grey), then this is about President Obama's handling of the economy and how, maybe he's guilty of some things, but he's "The only one who could have landed that plane."  It's interesting, though, the part about going to jail...

360, with an all-star cast, being released next month in France, is the story of many different people effected by intersecting relationships:

The Invisible War is about our military, which I love and am grateful for with all my heart; I support our troops and their families completely; but no one has the right to commit a crime and get away with it, especially when those are sex crimes. Female soldiers risk their lives equally, so they should have equal rights and access to justice but this documentary suggests that it is seriously being corrupted:

Rock Of Ages opens this weekend in theaters; what am I hoping for? That the "anything you want" is what you need mentality presented in the opening lines of the trailer will be debunked as being unsustainable and self-destructive. Essentially, that's the kind of vehicle I see in the Democratic party, (not that this will be a Democrat film, even if it does convey that kind of message) but the "church ladies" being led by Catherine Zeta Jones will undoubtedly look ridiculous and that will be intentional:

Under the Bridge: Red Hot Chili Peppers & Film Noir

I was listening to Pandora over the weekend and heard the Red Hot Chili Peppers platinum 1992 hit Under the Bridge and was surprised at the sophisticated structure of the song's lyrics. Let's examine the structure because it actually fits in with our film noir series:

I was trained as an art historian so I love research, but sometimes it's not possible to research a work of art, or even if you do, to gain access to the most important information (it's being withheld from the public, it's mis-remembered, no one simply knows) so let's place ourselves in a realistic situation that we are just seeing this video or hearing this song for the first time, (the tabula rasa paradigm as it is called, that we have a blank mind) and don't know anything about the song's background, and we are just given the information provided by the lyrics (full lyrics are below).

Frusciante (who is no 75 on The Rolling Stones list of all-time greatest guitar players) standing on a pedestal with inverted superimposed images behind him in the music video for Under the Bridge. Please note the multitude of surrounding clouds in the open image--probably referring to a storm--but also that something is hidden, in this case, the real details and meaning of the song. It's also the image of a desert behind him, which long-time readers should recognize as coming from the 1950s science fiction films we recently completed. Why the desert? There is not only the obvious symbolism of the desert spirituality being invoked--the song's narrator talking about loneliness--but also the desert is where atomic bombs are tested. In the video, at 3:23 and following, if you look behind Anthony Kiedis, an atomic explosion goes off behind him, at specifically the moment the narrator discusses what happened "under the bridge."

Immediately, the narrator of the song talks about loneliness and "my only friend, Is the city I live in," which is an animation of what is not animated: "Together we cry," "she's my companion," "she knows who I am," "she sees my good deeds," "she kisses me windy," "at least I have her love, The city she loves me." Each bold-faced action has to be performed by an animated being and the city is inanimate, having no life. This state of contradiction, however, is re-enforced later when the narrator sings "Oh, no, no, yeah, yeah, yeah," pulsating negative then positive, to enhance the state of confusion for the listener; there is also the dread of the place under the bridge where something bad happened, but then longing to be "taken to the place I love." Why? What does the narrator gain by creating this subtle confusion? By listening, the audience affirms participation with the narrator, so the ambiguity of the song allows each person to unconsciously fill in times when they themselves were in such a state of confusion and contraction, permitting the sought-after catharsis.

Anthony Kiedes, lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. In this still, we can see the atomic mushroom cloud exploding behind him as he runs towards the viewer; the explosion occurs at the same time in the song when the explosion of the lyrics take place, when the narrator "drew some blood" under the bridge on that day he wants to forget. In the upper-right portion of the still (and even better in the video at this shot) you can see airplanes in bomber formation. Why? The previous year of the song's release, 1991, is considered to be the end of the Cold War as the Soviet Union collapsed and there appeared to be a general end to the threat of nuclear war. The image is ambiguous, and how we answer it reflects ourselves more than anything else--as all art does--but the image of him running, while it immediately lends the interpretation of the great explosion going off within him in the event he discusses happening under the bridge, also fits in with the very traditional images of the "Space Race" and America's rush to out-produce the Soviet Union in nuclear warheads (the idea of the race was particularly popular in the 1960s with images of drag races, such as in American Graffiti and Carnival of Souls). There is the suggestion that whereas the crumbling of the Soviet Union ended the guilt of the atrocities of the Soviet regime (and believe me, there were atrocities) America couldn't out-run what it had done in dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What had finally ended for the Soviet Union was still going on for America, and the video seems to suggest that many of our problems still in the 1990s were from the World War II era, perhaps even the drug problems the song is reputedly about (more on that below).

It should not surprise us then, that in the last stanzas, the back up vocals are high-pitched females' voices, almost like the Greek chorus of ancient plays, both commenting upon the narrator's actions, drawing out more and more information from him as he approaches the climax of what happened "that day" and a part of the drama, the female voice of the city of Los Angeles the narrator compares to a woman, being given life by the narrator like Frankenstein's monster, the city his lover and his destroyer.

In 1992, if you just wanted one song off an album, you bought a single, and this is the single cover for Under the Bridge. The video was directed by Gus van Sant of My Own Private Idaho and Good Will Hunting fame. It's interesting the variation of people's ethnic backgrounds within the video: the lyrics discuss loneliness and specifically the differences between animated and non-animated personas (the city as being a person or person-like, and the absence of people, a friend or girlfriend) . The Hispanic and Asian by-standers on the street as Kiedis walks by, while I am sure not meaning to invoke their foreign-ness in the city, is meant to demonstrate the difference in Kiedis' own ethnic background and theirs'. In other words, the same animating of the city achieved through the lyrics is also achieving the de-animation of the narrator as he walks about really not belonging to any of the groups of people he passes by, kind of like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. (If you look at the cover above, the cloud formation above the building structure echoes that mushroom cloud in the video).

We don't need to inflate the techniques of the song to impart an artistic value to it, but it is also helpful to acknowledge where certain techniques have appeared before in culture because it will alert us to details which might escape us otherwise. The whole song is really upside-down, because if we heard the information provided by the last stanza first, we would understand why the narrator seeks out the friendship of the hills and streets, but because that is the last information we are given, that blood spill becomes shocking against the sterile world we have been touring with the narrator. Was it his own blood? Was it someone else's? How much blood? What were the circumstances? None of those questions matter, and that's why they aren't answered. What does matter is that the drawing of blood of another human is what caused his entire life to fall about, loosening another person's blood was loosening his own because he "gave his life away" that day and lost his love and that's the point, whatever we do to another is visited back upon us a hundred-fold.

The mushroom cloud from the Nagasaki explosion.

And this is the point leading us to the comparison of  film noir. As we shall see in Shane and other upcoming films, when a man has taken the life of another, like Cain who killed his brother Abel, they are not allowed to live amongst others, but are cast out from community life. Just as the narrator of Under the Bridge animates the city to be a female, so film noir was animating America to be the femme fatale so popular during this time. As we shall see in my next post on Orson Welles' The Lady From Shanghai, and as we have all ready seen in Out Of the Past, men in World War II had lost their humanity, but the country as a whole seemed to take it on, as if America was gaining strength from the loss of the souls of the men who had fought for her, specifically because of the dropping of the atomic bomb (please see The Second Original Sin: Art In the Atomic Age for more). Is this part of what is happening in the song, the narrator "gave his life away" to the city because of a crime against another human, so he has lost the right to participate in life? This is what I like so much about the song, the value it places on human life, because it was "some blood," not even a murder seemed to be committed, but that act against another person causes the narrator's own life to become less valuable because he failed to value life.

MacArthur Bridge in Los Angeles has been identified as the bridge in the song (invoking the great World War II hero General MacArthur). Supposedly, the lead singer had come to this location to buy drugs but ran into a gang controlling the area. This is where the singer would come to do speed balls, not caring who he was doing them with or what he had to do to get the drugs, and this sinking that his addiction caused him is what he never wanted to re-live.

This was a bit of a detour, but it's nice to find golden nuggets where you didn't expect them to be, and the great examples of conflicting life and death provides some valuable insights into artistic means of encoding, catharsis, and the employment of history to reach an audience and communicate a moral.
Eat Your Art Out,
The Fine Art Diner

Under the Bridge,
Red Hot Chili Peppers

Sometimes I feel
Like I don't have a partner
Sometimes I feel
Like my only friend
Is the city I live in
The city of Angels
Lonely as I am
Together we cry

I drive on her streets
'Cause she's my companion
I walk through her hills
'Cause she knows who I am
She sees my good deeds and
She kisses me windy and
I never worry
Now that is a lie


I don't ever wanna feel
Like I did that day
Take me to the place I love
Take me all the way
I don't ever want to feel
Like I did that day
Take me to the place I love
Take me all that way (yeah yeah yeah)

It's hard to believe
That there's nobody out there
It's hard to believe
That I'm all alone
At least I have her love
The city she loves me
Lonely as I am
Together we cry

I don't ever wanna feel
Like I did that day
Take me to the place I love
Take me all the way
I don't ever want to feel
Like I did that day
Take me to the place I love
Take me all the way (yeah yeah yeah)
Ooh no (no no yeah yeah)
Love me I say yeah yeah

Under the bridge downtown
Is where I drew some blood
Under the bridge
I could not get enough
Under the bridge "
Forgot about my love
Under the bridge
I gave my life away (yeah yeah yeah)
Ooh no (no no yeah yeah)
Here I stay yeah yeah

Here I stay...

The Great Betrayal: Prometheus & the Death Of the Father

The big opener this weekend is Ridley Scott's Prometheus, a sci-fi thriller about a group of scientists who go to another universe, following a "map" of planets from ancient pictograms and discover an alien race there. There are readers who have expressed that they would rather go into a film knowing what to look for and so they don't mind the spoilers; if you feel that your hard-earned $10 for the ticket should include the surprise, then, as usual, please stop reading, watch the film and then come back because I can't talk about the film without giving it away. Having said that, the aliens they discover have a DNA matching our own, meaning, they "engineered" us then left us to grow. The team discover that the aliens were using the "mapped" planet (from the ancient pictograms) as an outpost only to develop a weapon of massive destruction destined for earth. The question is, Why would they create us only to destroy us?

Prometheus was the god who gave mankind fire; in punishment, the gods ordered that he suffer eternally, bound to a rock, with an eagle coming everyday to eat out his liver that would grow back over night so he would have to endure the torment again the next day. Why the liver? The liver is what detoxifies the body (I know, you are saying, what does a god need a liver for, but if the god didn't need it, he wouldn't have it; besides, the details are what give us the important nuggets of wisdom to understand what is really being said by the myth of Prometheus).  Like the liver, fire also detoxifies, purifying metals and refining them. Prometheus receiving the punishment of having his liver removed then, fits the price the gods felt they were paying for Prometheus' betrayal, i.e., fire was to the gods what the liver is to the body, necessary for life. Why? As Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) says in his TED 2023 video (below), "Fire was man's first technology," and the invention of the wheel didn't happen until years later. With fire, the distinction between man and beast became more prominent because man could control and harness fire, but the animals couldn't, and that marked a step of independence away from the gods; when the scientific expedition is getting ready to go out onto the alien planet, that "small step for mankind" is mentioned, and that's how it all ties in. There is, however, a further dimension: Christ as a Prometheus figure. Like Prometheus, Christ came down from heaven and gave us the gift of fire, the Fire of the Holy Spirit, not to distance us from the gods and servitude to them, but to bring us closer to God in love and partnership for the world's salvation (those who stubbornly refused to be reconciled). Whereas Prometheus suffered only in his liver, Christ suffered throughout His whole Body (Prometheus only gave humanity one gift, Christ made His whole Self a Gift). This is imperative to understand this situation because we won't know who the aliens are in the film if we don't understand the vehicle which takes the expedition to the planet, Prometheus.

But that's not really the question because if we know who the aliens are, we know their motivations. The key to understanding who the aliens are lies in the two significant actions the film attributes to them: an act of self-destruction which introduced the alien DNA into the water stream, from which we are led to believe, all life came and the creation of (living alien) weapons of massive self-destruction which turned on the alien creators who made them and killed nearly all of them even as the alien creators were going to do to the earth. From these two small facts, we can piece together the larger, more interesting picture.

This is the waterfall from the opening sequence and the alien space ship is the sky just hovering above the falls. From the left side of the screen, a gray-cloaked (very medieval looking) figure appears and looks up at the ship as the massive waves of water rush down the fall.

Before we go forth into the fray, there are ambiguous points in the film, meant to mirror the viewer so the viewer will engage their own beliefs and, undoubtedly, you are getting my beliefs when you read this, as always. MY HOPE IS, as always, that aspects I point out, connections I make, will not dominate you into thinking I am right and there is no other way of understanding the film, RATHER, aid you in your own engagement with the film so you can reflect on what you believe and what your experience was. There are two reasons I am saying this: first, I need to remind viewers that I remember this is the point of the blog because, while I think it all the time, in every blog, I don't always take the time to state this; secondly, those who disagree with me will inevitably stop reading the post at the point they disagree with me and leave angry comments so I hope to pre-empt that.
Now, onward.

This is the back of the "Sacrifice Engineer" as the film credits him, one of the aliens who drinks a liquid which divides up his body that falls into the water and carries his DNA into becoming humanity. In this shot, the Sacrifice Engineer has drank the potion and watches as death starts to take hold of him. For a Christian, this scene communicates everything we need to know: the monk's robe is the robe of an irreligious, not a monk, and the gray of the robe isn't the gray of penance but of death (like the embers of fire dying, or a corpse turning ashen in the decaying process). The "water fall" means the fall from grace because water is the sacrament of baptism which cleanses us from original sin and the fall of water is the plummet into darkness which sin caused in us, losing the light of God so we could use our free wills to chose God and chose the Life He intended for us, but the devil engineered sin to kill us. The DNA of these aliens is like the "wounds" upon our souls left by Original Sin, even after Baptism has washed away the Sin itself, because we keep falling into Sin even though we have the power to turn away from it, and that's what each character in the film demonstrates.

The film opens with shots of beautiful and ancient landscapes, like the Highlands of Scotland and Iceland. Then, at the enormous waterfall (pictured above) we see a gray-cloaked figure looking up at the space ship. Who is he? The "Sacrifice Engineer" is the "source" of human DNA, as we watch him quickly succumb to death and fall into the waters, his body disintegrating and entering into the water from where biologists hold humanity evolved. We've seen a figure in a gray cloak before, specifically, Gandalf the Gray in The Lord Of the Rings; why gray, which later became white? Gray is the color of the pilgrim, the color of penance because it's the color of ashes (from dust you came, to dust you return). The design of the cloak is quite medieval (so much so that I thought he was a monk and the era was the Dark Ages in which the film started, not pre-history). This Sacrifice Engineer gives humanity his body as the seed from which we spring; or does he?

Noomi Rapace plays Dr. Elizabeth Shaw who finds the pictograms of the universe map where the aliens are located. An interesting question you and your friends might debate is: why would the engineer aliens leave a map to their deport planet where they were creating the weapons of mass destruction to launch at the earth? Are the pictograms Drs. Shaw and Holloway discover really "invitations" to come seeking out their own doom? Are they star maps? Or is it possible they came from another place? As mentioned, the dig where the audience meets up with Drs. Shaw and Holloway is on the Isle of Sky in Scotland. What other alien film takes us to Scotland? Battleship (the post-credits scene shows three school boys discovering an alien pod and, with the help of Angus who wears a religious medal around his neck as Elizabeth Shaw wears a cross around hers, the Scots open the pod to discover an alien. Why would two alien films, Battleship and Prometheus, incorporate Scotland into their stories? Possibly because of the "invasions" of England into Scotland and the alien-ness of the English wanting to take over their neighbors (I am very pro-English and very Scottish so I am just making historical reflections on what happened).

This qualifies as one of five "birth" scenes in the film; those who have all ready seen the film will automatically think of the alien "birth" of Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and her surgery to remove the alien "fetus" from her body which then takes a life of its own; there is also Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) when David (Michael Fassbender) deposits an alien "form" (it looks like a common tick but is the "seed" which was the weapons the engineer-aliens created to use against us) into Charlie's drink and it takes over Charlie (the same can be said of Milburn but since they are so similar I am counting them as one here although I will be discussing Milburn and Fifield further below). Then there is another birth in the film: the birth of Jesus Christ.

The Prometheus space ship, the "vehicle" which takes the expedition to the alien planet. We are informed by Meredith Vickers that the Prometheus expedition cost $1 trillion dollars, financed completely by the Weyland Corporation, and that monetary investment means control over the expedition. What does all this really mean? We know from our own expedition exploring science fiction films of the 1950s that there is never a trip into outer space that doesn't really symbolize a deeper look into the darker, unexplored regions of our own psychology, our minds and our souls (consider, for example, the great film Forbidden Planet with Leslie Nielson and Walter Pidgeon).  The incredible technological advances the space craft Prometheus has is literally the vehicle for our own understanding of our limitations and our purpose: is our purpose only to advance technologically as far and as fast as possible? What does our creation of androids nearly indistinguishable from ourselves say about ourselves and what relationship does that create between ourselves and our God (the discussion which David has with Holloway just before infecting him is extremely revelatory, but the conversation David has with Elizabeth towards the end is even more important). In other words, the extra-ordinary cost (the trillion dollars) of our world today has effected our relationship with our own selves and each other; are we mis-remembering what really happened in the creation story, with the devil's fall from grace and his dragging Adam and Eve down with him? Why do we remember what we do, and forgot other things? Is the true cost of our technological development that we have become more like David, an android, and like Charlie, disrespectful of our creators, than like Elizabeth, who chooses to believe and so be saved from the death awaiting the others?

After the crew has awaken, being kept alive by David the robot tending to them for over two years, it's December 21, 2093, it's Christmas as Captain Janek (Idris Elba) says while decorating a Christmas tree. It's not the only time the tree, the symbol of Christ's birth to redeem humanity, is in the situation taking place. Also important is the cross which Elizabeth wears, her father's cross, or, her Father's Cross. David removes it from her just before he tells her she's pregnant, removing it because he tells her it could be contaminated. When Elizabeth shows up to "save" David, the first thing she asks him is, "Where's my cross?" and he replies that it's in the pouch of his utility belt (his body being separated from his head).  By means of that symbol Cross, the birth and death of Jesus are present throughout the film and not just as swear words (which does happen). Then there is the fifth birth, that of David the robot. This clip isn't in Prometheus, but was released ahead to provide additional information for us before seeing the film:

Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) is the "creator" of David and makes a pre-recorded appearance aboard the Prometheus to explain why David is with him, stating David is the closest thing to a son he ever had, but David can't know gratitude because he doesn't have a soul. We discover later that Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) is Weyland's daughter he doesn't seem to acknowledge or at least is very fond of. So where do all these disparate ends bring us?
The identity of the aliens.

Dr. Charlie Holloway, left, and Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, right, just after an introduction by Peter Weyland that was pre-recorded. They have been asleep two years, just been woken up and approached the alien planet; the two explain to the scientific expedition what they are doing and why. Charlie uses a silver Rubik's cube as a presentation monitor for the images behind him. Just as one must twist and turn a Rubik's cube to "solve the puzzle," so we must twist and turn the information the film provides us until we can solve the puzzle, and the more information we take into consideration, the more likely we are to arrive at a cohesive theory of what we are supposed to understand. For example, what are we supposed to understand about "Holloway?" As Charlie says after Weylan's hologram introduction, that's the first time he's ever had to follow a ghost. Just as Weyland is a "hologram" so, too is "holo-way,": because he makes himself so unlikeable, and he only cares about the material discovery of the alien engineers and not the more philosophical issues (as Elizabeth does) Charlie is "hollow" like the holograms in the film. Yet there's another angle we can use to understand Charlie's character: Natalee Holloway, the high school graduate who's death is tied to Joran van der Sloot. Van der Sloot's lack of respect towards Holloway's family and his disregard for Holloway's death, leads us to speculate on how that relationship reflects--if at all--Charlie's relationship with Elizabeth, specifically, their sexual interaction even though they are not married.  Some may think this puritanical of me, however, please remember, it's the film itself which incorporates the Christmas tree and the cross, reminding all viewers of the Law of the Father which includes not committing adultery (and I will demonstrate this further below in my discussion of individual characters). So, Prometheus invokes the terrible tragedy of Natalee Holloway and Joran van der Sloot's treatment of her and the law through Charlie's character, which we need to take into consideration when examining his death and what happens to him.

Because we know that in the universe the film has created there is a Christian God, people have souls and because, as informed viewers of cinematic history, we know that expeditions into outer space always always always means expeditions into inner space (i.e., into our own selves like Elizabeth Shaw's archaeology dig isn't digging into the past but digging deeper within ourselves), the aliens who "created us" and now want to destroy us can be nothing else but: the devil. Like horror films such as The Cabin In the Woods, if we understand why and how each person's death correlates to purpose and plot of the film, as well as the physical characteristics of the aliens, this is the most reasonable explanation (although, surprisingly, most films prefer to talk about the devil while leaving God in the sidelines; Prometheus, however, reverses that trend). 

This is an engineer alien in one of their suits. Before they go out, David quotes the film Lawrence Of Arabia, which he had been watching earlier: "There is nothing in the desert." Why would he say this? Because even a non-human can recognize that what they are about to discover is deep within themselves. This alien is really a mirror-image of our own being, but the darkest part of our being, and some of the crew of the expedition resemble it more than others. The alien is both the devil and the tendency within us to do use our free will to do things that will destroy us, rather than use our free will towards giving us genuine life.

How can I back this up?
The devil was the "engineer" of our fall from grace. The devil is the one who "gave us these bodies" because our bodies--animated by souls enslaved to the appetites of the flesh--are marked with the stains of Original Sin because of the devil creating us "in his image" as fallen, rather than in our original image as the children of God. This explains why, towards the end, when David--or at least the head of David--tells Elizabeth that "He's coming to get you" and she realizes the bald engineer alien is in Prometheus looking for her and what does she get to defend herself?
An axe, a wicked looking axe.

This is the only image I could find of an engineer alien outside of the suit. They are very tall, completely hairless, very white with large black eyes but mostly humanoid features.

Regrettably, I couldn't find an image of Elizabeth's axe, but there is a brief shot of it in the trailer (at 2:24) at the top of this post. It's odd, isn't it, that in the year 2093, she grabs an axe to defend herself?... Where else have we seen an axe this movie season? Snow White and the Huntsman. I made the comment that it seemed odd that a Huntsman would have an axe as his primary weapon, since he's a hunter and not a lumberjack (I mean, who "axes" a deer?), but given the role of the apple in the "death" of Snow White, the axe in both films creates a correlation with the Tree of Knowledge from which the Forbidden Fruit came from and the attempt to cut down the tree (as we see Abraham Lincoln doing in Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter). What is the "Forbidden Fruit" in Prometheus? It's different for each person.

The "snake-like" creature, alien off-spring traveling through the black liquid substance on the ground that attacks Milburn (in the trailer at the top, a brief glimpse of this is at 1:40).  When the alien initially approaches, the two "flaps" are closed, making it look like a tall penis. Sorry, it does. Then the flaps come open and the "mouth" of the alien opens making it look like a vagina. Sorry, it does. The alien then wraps itself around Milburn's arm, tightening its grip on him, breaking his arm, squirting its acidic blood onto Fifield's space helmet, tearing a hole into Milburn's suit and working its way up into his helmet where it enters his body through his mouth, killing him. Why does the alien break his arm? That's the same hand of friendship which Milburn extended to Fifield and Fifield rejected. Fifield's harshness in responding shows how he has become like the rocks he loves (hardened) but also how weak and "easily broken" Milburn is with other people (just a little pressure and he breaks, being easily dominated by others). Milburn's lack of conviction makes him "hollow" like Holloway and Fifield.

Let's start with the biologist, Milburn. Two prominent characteristics stand out about him: one, he made an overture of friendship to the geologist Fifield (whom we shall discuss next) and secondly, he's a "Darwinist" (a term he uses himself, questioning Elizabeth and Charlie when they propose that aliens are the engineers of humanity, not one of biology's several possible models of evolution). When the alien off spring (pictured just above) approaches him, he talks to it like it's a woman; why? Milburn's fault (his sin) is that, like Fifield and even Charlie Holloway, he has made biology "his love," the "female" alien is his mate and the expression of his own masculinity; this fault, of not recognizing the soul in people (because, as an evolutionist, he denies the existence of God and the soul) and seeing all as merely biological functions. Let's round this out with discussion about Fifield.

Fifield, the geologist and there is definitely something alien about him; who tattoos their head? His hostility towards everyone is perhaps from the fact that he has only two loves: money (the sole reason why he's on the expedition) and rocks. Please note in this shot, when we first see him, that he's wearing yellow, which is also the color of the alien offspring's blood that melts his helmet shield. The acidity with which Fifield responds to Milburn's offer of friendship is deflected back onto him (the shield of his helmet also can symbolize the shield he puts up between himself and everyone else and that melting onto his face--the prime factor of our identity--means that's how we remember him, as being plastic and acidic, not human). Now we can better understand the tattoos on his head: they are a mess of hieroglyphs, forming a maze and because his head has been shaved there, it "exposes" (the shaved head) and illustrates (the pictures) what is inside his head. Just as he called the pictograms Charlie and Elizabeth found "maps," so that tattoo is a "map" of what's inside Fifield's head.

Because Fifield is a geologist, he decides to save himself when he gets concerned about what's going to happen to them in the alien temple/dome because there aren't any rocks there, so he's not needed. Perhaps the most telling characteristic about Fifield is when he tries to cut the alien offspring from Milburn's arm and it squirts that yellow acidic blood onto his space helmet, melting it onto his face. Yellow is the color of dignity, because it's the color of gold which is a sign of royalty however, yellow is also the color of a coward because the coward has failed to live up to their dignity in some way. In leaving the expedition when they get scared, Milburn and Fifield  get lost, and are literally "lost" and can't be saved; likewise, the "alien offspring" is the offspring of their alien tendencies in the way they treat other human beings, i.e., like they are not human beings, so they lose their own humanity.

Janek tries to get Charlie to wait until the next day to go into the dome they find but Charlie exclaims, "It's Christmas and I want to open my presents!" and that reflects Charlie's attitude about having sex with Elizabeth: they are not married, but he wants what he wants. When Charlie foolishly removes his helmet it's like he's "lost his head" (there are many examples of this in the film) and that resembles the giant head they find in the dome/temple/alien compound: it's a head without a body, a mind without a soul  (more on this below).

We'll discuss David in just a moment, but let's consider why Charlie is the one David infects with the alien substance: because, in terms of the film, Charlie is all ready infected. When David comes bringing another bottle of alcohol to Charlie after he has drank several, Charlie's verbal abuse of the android is alien to how we are supposed to treat others and Charlie wouldn't treat David that way if Charlie wasn't treating himself that way. Charlie's relationship to David reflects the creator-created relationship which Charlie has with God. It's was a brilliant stroke of Ridley Scott indeed to wait until Charlie was all ready infected to reveal the tattoo of the cross on his upper, right arm: the arms symbolize strength, and Charlie should have gotten his strength from God's love for him (instead of the snide comments he makes to David about creators and the engineer aliens) and because he doesn't recognize the dignity of his birth as a child of God, Charlie, then, becomes a vessel of the alien to feed off him because he has no way of defending himself from it. Proof: Charlie first realizes "some thing's wrong" when he looks into his eyes; eyes symbolize our souls and our capacity for wisdom, but what does Charlie "see" when he looks within himself? A worm.

"Big things have small beginnings," David says, examining the tiny seed or tick on his finger from the alien ampoule. When the expedition first enters the alien dome/compound, Elizabeth tells David and everyone "not to touch anything" and David goes ahead and touches the dark liquid oozing from the ampoules (the vase or bullet like capsules in which are the biological weapons of mass destruction designed by the engineers to be used on earth to destroy humanity). When David gives this "life form" to Charlie, David, in a way, "fathers" the new Charlie, making an act of creation David wouldn't be capable of on his own, so this "life form" is like David's own seed. 

As Charlie looks into the mirror, he's also looking into the mirror of his own soul, his eyes, and he sees, "A worm and no man," (as the Psalms say). I think we can say, though, that Charlie does "live up to the cross" because he ultimately sacrifices himself for the sake of the rest of the crew. When Elizabeth realizes how sick Charlie has become, Meredith Vickers refuses to allow him back on board (we'll discuss this below); Charlie tells her to kill him because he is willing to lay down his life for the safety of the others, just as Christ laid down his life. This isn't a fail-proof interpretation, but contributing to it is the way Charlie dies: by fire. Again, it's 2093 and they are still using flame throwers to defend themselves (like Elizabeth using the axe)? The fire, as discussed above under the post's first image (the film poster) is the purifying quality of the fire being used so Charlie has died a worthy death, which brings up to Captain Janek.

Meredith Vickers and Captain Janek in Prometheus.

Janek doesn't have a cross tattoo like Charlie, but he is the one who decorated the Christmas tree and plays Christmas music when Vickers enters. It's an accordion which belonged to Stephen Stills upon which Janek first plays Christmas music then proposes sex to Vickers and presumably has sex with her in her room ten minutes later (more on this below), singing the chords of the famous song Love the One You're With before going, insinuating that since he can't be with someone he truly loves, he will fake being in love with Vickers. (During this scene, Janek has been wrapped in a plaid blanket, invoking the Scottish Highlands seen earlier where Elizabeth Shaw discovered the "writing on the wall," suggesting that, like Scotland itself, Janek's space of the ship's control room has been invaded by an "alien" [Vickers] and that might be why he asks Vickers if she's a robot, there's "something alien" about her, but then she invites Janek to her space--her room--to invade her--have sex with her). The instrument symbolizes the "instrument" of Janek's body, and how "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak," and he goes from the love of the Holy Spirit (the Christmas music) to the sexual lust of popular culture (Love the One You're With).  Like Charlie being redeemed by his sacrifice, so, too, Janek sacrifices himself in a burst of flames (the explosion of the two ships crashing) and lays down his life for the greater good of humanity. 

Making the decision to crash the Prometheus into the alien ship before it can get to earth to launch an attack and destroy the world. Vickers in the background refuses to let him do it, but he decides to and she anxiously escapes the ship in an escape pod, only to be crushed moments later by the crashed alien ship. Janek and his two co-pilots, Chance and Ravel, stay with him and "go down with the ship." Chance is perhaps named for Peter Sellers' famous portrayal of an idiot who stumbles into politics in Being There and Ravel may be named for French composer Maurice Ravel. I don't have time to follow up on these leads, but if someone else can, or correct me, I would appreciate it!

Now, what about Meredith Vickers?
She dies, and specifically, she dies a death which Elizabeth Shaw escapes (being crushed by the alien ship after it crashes). There's a joke in horror films that if a woman has to run for her life, she's going to trip and fall, especially if there's nothing there to cause her to trip, and then she's going to die. This is exactly what happens to Meredith. Meredith escapes the Prometheus so she has no redeeming/self-sacrificing qualities about her. That Elizabeth is also running from the oncoming alien ship, falls, but rolls out of the way, is an exercising of the film maker's decision, to show that Meredith isn't doomed by them, but doomed by her own actions. The question then is: what was Meredith's downfall (what caused her to trip and fall from which she couldn't pull herself up in time to escape destruction)? Having sex with Janek. Again, they aren't married, it's Christmas, and sexual activity outside of marriage is a mortal sin. Just as Janek, Elizabeth and Charlie all have Christian ties so, too, does Meredith: the father.

Her hair is actually quite important to understanding her character's "state of mind," because hair symbolizes our thoughts, so what is done with hair, in art, reveals what a character is thinking or how they are thinking. Meredith always wears hair pulled back (strict discipline of her thoughts) and that keeping her hair back might also be a means of stripping herself of femininity (making herself sterile the way Elizabeth is naturally sterile).  After she's been with Janek, however, her hair is down. As events quickly escalate, she pulls her hair back again. Why is it such a big deal that Vickers and Janek have sex? Vickers tells everyone, "It's my job to make sure you do yours," and when someone should have been in the control room, Milburn and Fifield were being attacked by the aliens (so Vickers wasn't doing her job and wasn't letting Janek do his). Not only could they have possibly helped them (well, probably not) but they wouldn't have gone out searching the next day, giving David time to find the alien still in stasis and sending the alien ship off. That's the second reason why it's such a big deal, Vickers was responsible for one thing and she didn't do it. The first reason it's such a big deal is because, again, it's a mortal sin.

Vickers has a relationship with her father, but it's obviously a bad one. Instead of seeking out the real relationship with her Heavenly Father, she lets her rotten relationship with her father rot her. Now, what about Peter Weyland? We think he's dead, until David has discovered the engineer alien still in stasis and awakens Peter from hyper sleep to go see the engineer alien and ask him to give Peter life, help him cheat death. Please watch this clip again, with the ear listening for the hubris of Peter, not the Apostle of Christ, but the Apostle of technology who says, "We are the gods now."

In the Garden of Eden, the devil tempted Eve with the idea of becoming like God; when Jesus came down, he gave us the means to become like God, through Love and ridding ourselves of sin. Peter Weyland was too good for that: he wants the immortality, without the taste of death, and without ridding himself of sin. Peter has become so smart, he's stupid. Just as he failed to cultivate a real relationship with his real daughter, so he made a god out of an idol just as he made a "son" out of a robot. Now, we can begin to understand the large humanoid face they find when they enter the alien compound (pictured below).

It's humanoid without being human. I couldn't find an image of this, however, when we see Weyland alive for the first time, he's extremely old and wears a white, muslin gown and sandals and David washes his feet, not as Jesus washed the feet of His Disciples, but the inverse of that, because Weyland doesn't want to serve, but to be served, the opposite of Christ. In this way, we can see Weyland as a party to the devil because Weyland so thoroughly rejects the teachings of Christ, wanting to be a god, not the child of God, and not being an obedient child himself, he rejects his own child and creates a child with no free will of its own because Weyland doesn't know how to love because he rejects the source of Love, God.

Does this remind you of anything? It reminds me of the gold idol in Indiana Jones and the Raiders Of the Lost Ark. It's human without being human, like David. If you look closely at the cheeks in the picture above, there are symbols which David punches like buttons and things start to happen, endangering the expedition. Like all idols, it knows how to "press our buttons" to get our free will to do what it's sin-bent nature will lead it to do (just like the philosophy of free will in The Cabin In the Woods). Peter Weyland was too good to worship God, but he's willing to worship this alien that, instead of dying for him, kills him, which is the nature of all idols: we worship it because we think it means life to us (materialism, having a good time, etc.) but it kills us, whereas Christianity efficiently kills us every single day--if we are doing it right--because our selfishness has to die, our lack of charity has to die, our attachment to the world has to die, because those are things that kill us by keeping us away from God. That's why each person on the Prometheus embraced, and why all of them but Elizabeth--"the true believer"--doesn't die.

Which finally brings us to David.

Does he look like a communist in this?

Why would humanity need to create robots indistinguishable from ourselves? This is a good question that each of us should think over, and perhaps for Prometheus, the answer comes from the David Video above: humans don't always want to do what is distressing or unethical, but that doesn't mean that someone doesn't want someone who will do those things. But then there is the obvious question: why did Peter name David, "David?"

Why does David say, "Doesn't everyone want their parents to die?" and Elizabeth responds, "I didn't." David sees a "parent" has a programmer, someone who makes the decisions for you (as many non-Christians see God) but Elizabeth sees love, validation, bonding and nurturing.

When a film sites one film within its story, the chances are, it's going to site several as a means of expanding its ability to interact with the audience. For example, "David" is also the name of the android played by Haley Joel Osmet in Steven Spielberg's 2001 science fiction film A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Just as David wasn't a real boy in that, like Pinocchio, so David in Prometheus isn't a real man, or a real son, or a real scientist.  There is another reason why he's named "David," and that continues the religious thread connecting all the characters.

The red light comes from the "pups," the mapping robots who, just as David isn't really human, so the "pups" aren't real dogs. Ironically, they belong to Fifield, the geologist, the one who gets lost--even though he has the mapping pups--and can't get out of the alien compound, and we should remember that, because he's lost "allegorically" and the film uses the physical state of being lost to communicate that to us. Whereas the pups show the expedition where to go and light the way, so to speak, David turns off his signal from Vickers when she wants to see what he sees, but he decides he doesn't want her to see after all.

In the Old Testament, King David was a proto-type of Jesus the Christ, the promised Messiah, but David wasn't the Messiah. Likewise, David 8 (his technical name) is a prototype of future robots. What's wrong with David? He "loses his head," literally, when he awakens the stasis engineer alien, Elizabeth knows that it's not a good idea, but David does it anyway, just as he does so many things in the film that a better human wouldn't, or would they? In the scene when the medic Ford dies, we have to ask, why? What does she do to really warrant death? How much is the medical industry a vehicle ("Ford" the cars) for people wanting to deny death more and more because of advances in technology instead of facing reality--the way Peter Weyland won't--that we are all going to die? Ford was also willing, it appears, to allow the alien fetus within Elizabeth to stay in her while they traveled back home and then "deal with it" later, the way David was going to do, disregarding her humanity and treating her like a science experiment.

One of the first things we see David do is watch Lawrence Of Arabia (on the list of AFI's Top 100 Movies Of All Time), specifically the scene when Lawrence puts out the match between his fingers; why? What does this reference contribute to our knowledge about David? One, I think David is as out of place among humans as Lawrence was among the Arabs; secondly, the way David practices saying the line (which we see Peter Weyland also saying in the TED 2023 video) suggests that not only did Weyland program David to "like" the film, but there is something "natural" in our cultivation of the artificial within us (David forming a facade, like when he tells Elizabeth, "I didn't think you had it in you, oh, sorry, poor choice of words," referring to her alien fetus).

As Elizabeth is in hyper-sleep, David watches her dreams, gathering information about her life and especially her father. This is an example of David not realizing the intimacy and privacy of our personal thoughts, to him, her dreams are just data, information, facts, but to Elizabeth, it's her emotions, her memories.

Now, why does David "infect" Charlie with the alien virus?
When David asks Charlie if he would do anything to get his answers, I don't think Charlie had being infected in mind, but not having any free will of his own, all of David's answers are absolute, so he considers a human's answers to be absolute, not recognizing the nuances of the personality and the soul. Why does David remove Elizabeth's cross? Perhaps it's because he's afraid her religious conscience will get in the way of decisions she needs to make and, again, not realizing that our beliefs are arrived at by our free will (Elizabeth, like her father, chooses to believe) David probably thinks that removing the cross is like removing a piece of hardware from his brain, or just re-programing her, the way some political leaders in this country thing about Catholics.

It's difficult to tell in this shot because her arm is in the way, but she's got blood all over her because she has just had an abdominal surgery to remove the three month old fetus growing inside her from having had intercourse with Charlie the night before. David wants to put her in stasis so she can be experimented upon when they return but Elizabeth "wants it out!" Does this conflict with her Christian belief?

Does Elizabeth have an abortion?
This is a tricky question, and each person will answer it differently, however, I am going to say no. Towards the end, when both Vickers and Elizabeth are running away from the crashed alien ship ready to crush them, Elizabeth falls, but rolls out of the way and is safe; then, after crushing Vickers, it falls backward onto Elizabeth and you think she's dead, but there's a slight curvature in the landscape where she got caught and she's safe. Why does she survive when Vickers falls? I think it's rather like Dana in The Cabin In the Woods, she suffers and suffers and suffers, but Elizabeth becomes stronger in her suffering because of her faith, unlike Charlie who is worn down by it. Elizabeth's "fall" when she's running is probably the "fall from grace" caused by intercourse with Charlie, but I say that also because of something that happens earlier to Elizabeth.

One of many "losing your head" themes in the film: a storm has come in this shot and Elizabeth has brought back a decapitated alien head to examine it and she "loses it" in the storm; David gets his head ripped off, Charlie takes his helmet off to breathe in the alien atmosphere, and the Fifield and Milburn find a pile of alien corpses who have "lost their heads," being eaten or destroyed by the biological weapons of mass destruction they were developing to use on us. Why this theme? Is it because by losing our faith, we have lost our heads?  Does anyone in the film really exhibit good sense or judgment about anything? When we become "talking heads" like David, separated from the "body of the church" and the "body of faith," then we have to be reunited to it.

When they wake up from the hyper-sleep, Elizabeth is the only one throwing up, her body in shock. Her vomiting is a sign that Elizabeth can do what the others cannot, apparently: reject what should not be taken in. The pro-life arguments against abortion are that a baby has a soul at the moment of conception and, since God is the author of the soul, life cannot be extinguished, that child has a destiny in the order of God's creation. The alien inside Elizabeth is alien, it does not have a soul. It is just like an animal, like a tape worm, for example, but not human, hence, it's not an abortion, but a vital procedure to save her life. The illustration of "getting it out" of her is that it does save her life, in that moment and (pictured below) when the Engineer Alien comes to kill Elizabeth, she unleashes the "squid" face sucker monster onto him and it saves her again but only for the moment as we see a "new alien" being born after entering through the mouth of the engineer alien.

The long legs coming out is the super-fast growing squid thing which Elizabeth removed from inside her and that bald thing on its back behind Elizabeth being consumed is the Engineer Alien that survived the ships crashing and came to kill Elizabeth and David warned her about it. Elizabeth gets away (this is the scene where she had the axe) and goes to find David.

I hope that if you don't go to catch this at the theater, you will at least rent it; this would be a great film to watch with a date or a group of friends because it's going to stir up a lot of discussion, in a good way! (FYI, if I am going to be watching a film with someone I like to know if there is nudity, and there is not; there is the start of Elizabeth and Charlie having sex, then it breaks away, and only the invitation from Vickers to Janek to come to her room; there is foul language, especially the taking of the Lord's name in vain, but probably to illustrate that those people know the name of Jesus, but will not use it to pray for help). Have we become so smart that we're stupid? Are the weapons of mass destruction intended to destroy us symbolic of all the troubles and woes that the devil causes us in life, that actually brings us closer to God rather than tearing us away from Him, and that's how we revolt against the devil in whose image we spend most of our lives? The film will challenge you in what you believe and know, but it wants you to believe because it shows you the consequences awaiting everyone if you don't, and for that, I applaud Mr. Ridley Scott for doing something I never imagined him doing, and certainly other film makers don't!

Eat Your Art Out,
The Fine Art Diner