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.

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…”

Happy Birthday Laura

Myst: My Cybersmith Quest Remembered

Back in the day, you know, like '96 or something, My brother lived in Boston with our parents. On the weekends, my Dad used to take us to Harvard Square where we chilled in the shops, ate in the classic spots and took in intellectual culture. The coolest thing that was ever in Harvard Square was Cybersmith, an uber cool internet cafe from the first age of the internet.(http://www.ibiblio.org/cmc/mag/1995/mar/jason.html)

My memories of that place are limited, but I remember a bunch of internet access stations, hubs of gaming computers and an awesome Virtual Reality station where others would watch you navigate an digital world as you donned a visor and gloves. One day, while cruising through Cybersmith, I noticed two men playing a strange game with unbelievably clear graphics. This was an age of sonic the hedgehog and extremely pixelated TV gaming. What I saw on the monitor that day was more than a game, it was a dream sequence.

The men who were playing looked perplexed and enthralled. They were taking notes on the game and had a large bible of notes from a bookseller called Unlocking MYST. Under their breath, they mumbled thanksgiving from the guide text. "Thank God we bought this, we would have never figured this out otherwise." They may have been Harvard men, but I suppose they were Engineers. Who knows, they may have been intellectual wannabes, desperately trying to decipher the greatest puzzle of computer gaming's middle age.

They left the computer hub a few minutes later and left the game up. I watched them leave and then proceeded over to the computer. There was a minute and a half left on the session. I strolled casually around the digital landscape trying to figure what was going on. The game seemed to have no point and was only alluring in the randomness of the landscape. But something kept me there, something kept me searching and trying to figure the game out. The session ended suddenly and I looked up. My Dad refused to pay for a computer game and we walked on.

Recently, I remembered Cybersmith and Myst during a mundane Calc class. I dreamed of playing the game again, and this time, conquering the epic macintosh puzzle. I have enlisted the services of friends to help me achieve my dreams. Together, as Project Myst, we will conquer the game in the our senior spring and achieve ultimate nirvana.

This is what I am after.

This is why I come to you.

V for Vendetta

Opera House gave an advanced screening of V for Vendetta Thursday Night at 10:05. It was probably the coolest thing Opera House has ever done. There was 10 people there besides Conor, Grady and I. Exiting the theatre to an empty Newport felt surreal. The film had changed the landscape somehow, and the calm coziness I feel in Newport was gone. The town seemed hostile and over-ordered. In the emptiness of the night, stop signs seemed superfluous; I could feel the romanticized anarchism growing in my gut.

V for Vendetta had enough media attention and advertising to get Hugo Waving elected President with Natalie Portman as his First Lady. With that said, the film does something that has alluding the Wachowski brothers since their 1999 smash success, live up to the hype.

In an age of reality television, TV Personality talking heads for News sources and quagmire conflict bordering on Civil War, V for Vendetta shines as an oasis of reflection and an elevation from the mundane of an American Cineplex. It is action-packed, elusive in subtleties and powerful in its allegory. Separating itself even from such direct Hollywood stabs at Washington as Good Night and Good Luck or Syriana, V for Vendetta infuses social-political concern into the fabric of a modern blockbuster. It is, if nothing else, the most thought-provoking $70 million film that has ever been produced.

But V for Vendetta, ironically, is not even much of an action film. Like the once-staple Cubrick and Bradbury-inspired works of Dystopian futurama, V for Vendetta adheres to the conventions of the sci-fi thriller. Its plot offers the complexity that ensnares an enlightened audience and allows the exploration of deep contemporary themes.

To avoid plot description, V for Vendetta is the story of revolution within the totalitarian regime of 2020 England. Rising to power within a world of chaos and confusion, England’s top-politicians offer a conservative, proto-fascist state to ease the concerns of British citizens. Media control centers the conservative party’s control mirroring an America that is all to dependent on the “liberal” media and a Russian alternative where President Putin controls all state media outlets.

V for Vendettas’ exploration of gay/lesbian themes also reflects the sentiments of a country embroiled in polarizing battle between red and blue states. Ironically, the repercussions of the Iraq war, avian flu and domestics tensions embroil Vendetta’s America into full civil war. The backdrop of the film’s action offers a rich tapestry of post-modern what-ifs in extension of today’s current contentions.

In the action, Hugo Weaving plays (or rather voices) V, a midnight vigilante and radical genius, whose meticulous planning and diabolical devotion for revenge take him against the government himself. V is the film’s icon, wearing a mask of Guy Fawkes, and a hat of Pilgrim stature. His impressive eloquence and historical allusion to the Guy Fawkes (architect of the Gunpowder Plot 1605) elevates the character above rabble vigilantes. Interrupting the rape of Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman), V quotes Macbeth before manhandling his opponents in proper Neo-style (one of the few transparent influences of The Matrix on the film). The connection between V as mysterious revolutionary and Evey, as an anonymous member of the conservative state, reveals an odd dichotomy: the everyman as represented by Evey and the anyman as manifested in V expose an inherent truth in the architecture of revolution.

Portman’s acting is superb throughout the film. Her role and emotions becomes pivotal as the film remains true to its character and does not unmask V. A strong cast of British and Irish greats back-up Portman and Weaving at the top. John Hurt (Chancellor Sutler) returns to familiar ground he covered in an adaptation of Orwell’s 1984. Stephen Fry and Stephen Rea also come on board to steer the film home.

V for Vendetta’s explosion in the doldrums of a weak movie market, raise to perhaps unjust heights. Nevertheless, the film’s brilliance, vision and action make one of the finest films since The Matrix, which was released over seven years ago. Marking the anniversary of The Matrix’s runaway success those many years ago, the Wachowski’s film also coincides with another anniversary, the three year mark of the war in Iraq. While this may be sheer coincidence and the film’s capitalistic backers would unlikely reveal political undercurrents in the movie’s release, V’s own words come cryptically through. “There are no coincidences,” Argues V near the middle of the film, “Only the illusion of coincidence.”

Hypnertomachia

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