4/21/2006

Lion & Chessboard


I found a plastic Aslan in a Happy Meal.
(Pre-packaged Christianity demonstrates Pop-Culture)
His mouth moved, like a puppet,
His voice inaudible and readily substituted.
The
Beady, bleary eyes of the animal did not
Recall the glory his maker had intended.

C.S. Lewis in skepticism searched the night-sky for his Aslan
- I found mine in a happy-meal.
Over 2 million served reminds that stomachs can hold down dilutions
And mass-media can market masses to the mindless.
Narnia is a wonderland, a wishland or a wantland
Depending on the Walden you read
Or the Walt Disney you believe in.
And I found my tepid Aslan uninspiring.

And there will be an age when the lost
Find themselves in such symbols and such icons.
There will be a time when the dilutions are diluded
And the symbols symbolize symbols that were only allusions
To begin with.

The weakness of the modern mind consoles the expired
The plastic of practicality extinguishes the inspired.

Hallucinations of prophetic mass-media inhabit the mind
In occasional visions Aslan walks mildly through Elysian fields,
His roar triumphant, the eternal salvation of a dreamworld
On the BBC war broadcast radio,
And Lewis is lost at his side like a tired child
patting the Great lion
and whispering grace.

Meek puppet playthings do not participate in such imagination,
I found my Aslan in a Happy Meal, and
The plastic wrapping said Choking Hazard in
17 languages. The tower of Babel is closer,
Lewis whispers to the wind and lion,
While somewhere, someone separate is calling out
Christians! to the fierce and nameless masses.

4/08/2006

Fern Gully: The Quest for Erotic Erudition

This article is 14 years overdue. I could not express myself with coherent letters when I was first tortured by Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest. In retrospect, Fern Gully seems like an acid trip with pokemon characters. Robin Williams played a bat with electrodes going through his brain. A couple of fairies flew around the rainforest on neon butterflies shrinking people at will. Tim Curry, yea TIM CURRY played the villain Hexxus, who may or may not have been a malicious can of spray paint.

I’d still like to know WTF was going on. Fern Gully seems to have been a movie about bats on electroshock therapy. Robin William’s character, Batty Koda, had two electrodes running right through his head. At times, unexplainably, Koda would be shocked Shitless. At other instances, Koda would crack out completely representing Robin Williams own difficulties with the script and the producers suggestion of ecstasy as payment for acting.

The fairy-chick, called Crysta was honestly pretty hott. She kinda looked like Courtney Cox meets tinkerbell, and I would have to agree that she was a pretty big sex symbol for prepubescent boys at my local middle school. But Crysta also represented the feminism of the 90’s. She is confident in herself and capable, but still requires the warmth and comfort of a man. Crysta’s political agenda is something like Ralph Nader’s green politics in the body of Hillary Clinton. Her message is one of peace and hedonism. In fact, Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest (Director’s cut) features the line, “Give it to me straight Bill, and don’t stop. I want to *%$! Like a KANGAROO.”

That’s what Fern Gully is actually all about. Hidden beneath a veil of environmental concern, The Last Rainforest represents a sexual odyssey for one fortunate logger named Zak. After being “accidentally” shrunked by Crysta, Zak must confront his fetish fears and fantasies in the tropical, tripped out atmosphere of Fern Gully. Zak’s loss on innocence is The Last Rainforest. In the middle of the sexual subversion, some loggers threaten to destroy the rainforest, but this is a secondary plot, hiding the epic quest of eroticism beneath a veil of family values.

Fern Gully was a film designed to indoctrinate kids with the SAVE THE RAINFOREST mentality of the 90’s. Sure I was only four, but Fern Gully baffled my mind. Trippy mushroom scenes alluded to the large quantities of LSD the filmmakers were using. The animation was also so cracked out that it’s stylized “Acid-Anime” may be the only known use of peyote-induced child labor in the history of film. In short, Fern Gully was at best a seizure, and at worst two-hours of visually induced epilepsy.

“Just beyond your dreams,
Lives a secret world.
Where every tree is home.
Every sound is a song.
And humans exist
Only in fairy tales
Until now…”

4/06/2006