Watching THOR, for Natalie Portman's Shoulders, and Remembering Nanos Valaoritis, CHUSHINGURA , and 47 RONIN
This Blogger’s faculty adviser, when he got his Masters in Creative Writing at San Francisco State, was the Greek poet Nanos Valaoritis. He died in 2019, at the age of 98.
He was an extraordinary man; not only a poet, he was a lawyer, novelist, and translator. He had spent many years living in Paris and London, during their literary hey days; he knew T.S. Elliott, W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas. Jean-Paul Sartre, Anouilh and Mauriac.
He had returned from Paris and London to live and teach in Athens. That part of his life was aborted when, after the Colonel’s coup, he was pulled from his classroom, arrested and tortured., The Junta informed him that unless he went into exile, his family, friends and students would be arrested and subject to torture.
The first day in his class, he proclaimed that we would not be studying soap opera; he hated soap opera.
A comely student raised her hand, and asked him, “ Could you define soap opera?”
He answered:” Art which does not take Death seriously.”
He went on: “ Life is the mother of us all; Death is the Father of us all; it is Death which does the discipline in our existence. Make sure you deal with death and its impact in your writing. Life and Death have two offspring, rational Cowardice and irrational Courage. We need both: cowardice, hiding in our burrows, ensures the survival of the species; courage insures the survival of humanity as civilized beings.’
This Blogger usually avoids MARVEL UNIVERSE films, since he made the self-discovery that he was rooting for THANOS to wipe out half of humanity; that seemed like such a good idea to this Blogger, what with Climate Chnage and all. .
However, this Blogger has had an affinity for Natalie Portman since she made love to her mattress in BLACK SWAN. Her arms are terrific in THOR; everyone who appears in a soap opera cartoon in which the characters are oblivious to danger, risk, and Death should have the arms of a midget lumberjack.
All art, regardless of how superficial, has societal, moral consequences. The fact that the MARVEL UNIVERSE has devoured all the oxygen in American culture, in 2022 , is appalling. There is a serious moral consequence when the number one expression of art in the culture is cartoon soap operas, oblivious to Death, killing, loss and consequence. When Art becomes a game, the purpose of art is thwarted.
The purpose of Art is clear; to inform the audience that Life is Grand and dangerous, unjust and glorious; and perhaps, most importantly, to question the very concept that we are in control of Life.
In medieval Japan, a wicked war lord tricked a virtuous samurai. The authorities, the shogun, forced the good samurai to commit suicide to atone for his wish to avenge.
The suicide left the Good Samurai’s personal retainers, without a master, 47 of them. They became masterless samurai, ronin, the 47 RONIN.
The foul death of their master demanded revenge; but the shogun stated that if they exercised revenge, all of them would be, condemned to death by suicide.
Their story in Japanese lore is called CHUSHINGURA.
So, the 47 met in secret and took a vow; they would go their separate ways; live their lives, some dissolute, until the shogun and Evil war lord thought that they were all cowards.
Then, then they would meet at a designated place, at an appointed hour and take their revenge, damn the consequences. They all knew, by taking that vow, they had signed their death warrants.
They had one problem; one of the 47 was a known coward. The 46 told him, that he would not have to agree to the vow.
He replied that he wanted to avenge their master as much as the courageous ones; he took the vow.
On the day of the revenge, the 46 gathered, missing the cowardly one.
He had tried to come; but on his way to the revenge, he had suffered an accident and had been hurt. He could no longer walk; so, he crawled. He did not want his peers to think of him as a coward.
He dies on the way to the revenge; his peers thinking that he was indeed a coward.
Sometimes, with even the best of intentions’, the individual is not in control.
The remaining 46 strike, exacting their revenge.
They are forced to commit suicide by the authorities; but before they die, they learn that the coward had been on his way.
In America, the Japanese film recalling this tale was called 47 RONIN; it ran in a theater in Berkeley, California for 41 straight weeks.
Comic books and comic book adaptations deal with fake courage. The MARVEL Universe trivializes courage.
That is a very important social message about behavior in 2022 America, which is awash with kill crazy young males; that 2022 message is that courage, as a virtue, does not matter; only killing matters, so one has a license to kill innocent and defenseless kids, shoppers, church goers and parade viewers.
Th trivialization of courage allows damaged young males to think it is courageous to kill innocents.
All these killers of kids, all these young males, in their black outfits and dresses are killing innocents , in order to be comic book unassailable and indestructible. Of course, they are unassailable and indestructible; they are killing kids, church goers, innocents, all weaponless innocents.
Make no mistake about this, comic book adaptations are not escapism, but exercises in reducing the humanity in us to trivialization. American Art needs to begin to take Death seriously, if American society intends to claw back its values from comic book cant.
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