#Abrahimic Myth

[zenosanalytic]

House of X #1: The Complications of Trees

Ok so, with that Intro Out of the Way, Here’s me talking abt the intro image of House of X #1 for 1500 words :| :| :|

For Context:

Father and Mother

Ok let’s get into it. The central image of page 1 is of 3 pillars of light pouring into the cavern from above, triangulating a Tree of Roots. Right off the bat this is Chthonic: “Chthonic”(pronounced thahnik, tho if you wanna sneak a barely perceptiple “ch” at the front of it, I’ll respect you u_u) means “of the underworld” or, less ominously, “subterranean”, and here we are not only literally in a cavern, but dealing with a tree made out of the subterranean PARTS of a tree; its roots. Strange eye-like fuschia circles seem to look on from the cavern walls, pupil-less, insectile, and, to me, especially reminiscent of the eyes of the Ohmu from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. For comparison:

Strange orange chrysalis-fruit grow at the bottom of the root tree(whether from it or placed near it isn’t clear). From these chrysalises hatch the X Men, beginning with Scott and Jean, to be welcomed by Xavier.

There are clear mythic elements to this image. Representing the X Men first with Scott and Jean, the prototypical m/f couple of the series, is an obvs reference to Adam and Eve. Having Xavier standing above them, looking on, welcoming them to life within a plant-space, a garden, obvsl casts him in the position of God, The Father, in the abrahimic creation myth and suggests his responsibility for this event, even though they are hatching from the eggs(?) growing on the tree, and not being made by him directly.

It isn’t only abrahimic, though; those Chthonic elements again. Gaia, the Greek Mother-Earth, was at once human and Earth; her anatomy analogized to physical geography. Caverns are enclosed interior spaces; wombs are enclosed interior spaces; caverns are wombs. Xavier’s costume furthers the Chthonic connection through oblique reference to other subterranean Greek deities: he is dressed is a form-fitting black jumpsuit. I cant speak to how Hades was colored in the classical era, but in the modern day he is typically depicted in blacks, dark-greys, and dark or grey blues, matching Prof X’s costume here. This visual connection to Hades goes further(though I can see this one being unintentional; Plouton’s epithets arent exactly common knowledge): X wears what looks to be a portable version of Cerebro which completely covers his eyes. A common Epithet for Hades/Plouton is “The Unseen One”; Xavier’s SEEMING sightlessness calls this to mind without being a direct reference, or undermining the larger visual(which his being invisible would certainly do). And we could take that further to an even more oblique, even subtextual, play with inversion&paradox, with resolution of opposites, with things being both themselves and their negation: Sightless, Xavier Sees; Seen, he is Unseeable. The Chthonic staging and symbolism, pairing Xavier with this environment, strengthens the Hades connection(Hades is the “Lord of the Underworld”, Xavier is in an Underworld place, in a “Lordly” position), and conversely the parallels are strengthened further by knowledge of Hades/Plouton’s Marriages. Originally he was husband to Demeter, variously etymologized as Mother of the House or “Great/Rye/Divine/Earth Mother”, seen in the subterranean setting, and then Persephone, a Goddess of Spring, Harvest, and Vegetal Fertility, which we see in the seeming-birth-giving tree. And the mythic symbolism of THAT goes further still, given how common humans and animals growing from plants are in myths all over the world. The image is layered in creation-myth, birth-imagery, and the supernatural or superhuman(the last bits resonating, obvsl, with the XMen’s own history&mythology). This works on both an immediate and meta level; not only is this scene taking place within the context of the story Hickman and his team are trying to tell, but it also takes place at the beginning of a reboot of the XMen franchise; in a literal meta sense, this scene is a “rebirth” of The XMen into this new “Dawn of X” era.

Returning to the cavern(but staying with Greek myth, cuz I’m predictable), it potentially presents another mythic aspect, though this is PROBABLY an idiosyncratic read and not intentional. Caverns are dark places; literally the epitome of darkness in the mythic Greek sense through Erebus(non-night darkness, the darkness of deep shadows or caverns), the husband-son of Nyx(Night). Erebus is more than just the son or the husband of Nyx, however; Nyx created Erebus from herself, by herself. In a real sense, Erebus is, simultaneously, apart from Night and a part of Night; Himself and Herself, Darkness and, at the same time, Night writ small. Coincidentally(and apropos for this story), within some Orphic traditions Nyx is tasked with ensuring the passage of divine leadership from one generation to another, and choosing who will lead.  Which leads us to...

Ambiguity

Ambiguity cuts through all of this, undermining the notion of clear oppositions; clear beginnings and clear endings. Xavier, small and masculine on the first page, is on the second towering and in a classically feminine pose(I’ve seen this in dance and modeling approx a BILLION times, but I dont know the name of it, and I cant seem to land on a search phrase that’ll get me decent stills of it. If anyone does, or can point me to an instance of it, I’d appreciate having the name so I could search & plop some comparison images in here) which combines with the conflation of his will, the Tree, and the birth above to present him as ambiguously mother and father. While possibly unintentional the same is repeated for the cave itself through the Erebus connection: an underground womb, it is Feminine; a “place of darkness”, of Erebus, it is Masculine.  And of course in the earth is where ppl are buried; a place both of birth, and death. Likewise a tree’s roots usually take nutrients from the earth, feeding on decay and decomposition, yet here they do the opposite “fruiting” the X-Men from themselves like moths from a cocoon.

There’s a particularly interesting depiction of X in this two-page spread that, at first glance, is symbolically masculine but, on further thought, I think its very masculinity works to play into this thematic ambiguity. On page 1 a tiny erect person stands before the Tree on a large mound, dwarfed by the uterine tree dominating the cavern&scene. The masculine symbolism of that figure in its context is obvious. However that context also subtly subvert it through a pun. Obvsl I go LOOKING for puns, so maybe this is a wholly idiosyncratic read of it, but part of why the tiny figure reads as masculine despite its lack of definition is the pun in “mound” being popular vernacular for vagina(more specifically the vagina’s external features, and most specifically the mons pubis/mons venus). So the first image we have of Xavier(though we aren’t SURE it’s him yet, or if it’s a man) is of him as a tiny man on a mound; symbolically atop a vagina :| A popular vernacular phrase for the clitoris is “a small man in a boat” with the “boat” also being this anatomic context :| :| Visually, Xavier is a Clit :| :| :| Again: Masculine and Feminine combined rather than opposed, and it goes all the way down(yes this wording is both awkward AND intentional u_u u_u).

His ambiguity crystalizes and embodies the general ambiguity of the scene: eggs that are chrysalises; new-born adults; a Tree that is only roots, birth underground in a place of burial, Light in a Dark Place, and mammals born through insect-imagery by a tree. This last image, the central action of the two pages(beyond the plants-fruiting-animals stuff mentioned before), contains so much ambiguity just on its own: Plants typically possess both ”male” and “female” parts(neither of which honestly mirror the animal counterparts for which the words were coined); the XMen “hatch” from chrysalises but chrysalises arent eggs they’re a stage in transition from one form to the next; they are human, but the process of their “birth”, with its eggs and cocoons “fruiting” from a plant, is everything BUT mammalian and human. 

This ambiguity extends to the moral realm. Large, bald heads, masks and helmets, eggs, sightless or hidden eyes, dark colors --especially black and purple(the fuschia circles, but also some lighting effects)--, gender ambiguity, pod-people; all of these are also conventional signs of the nefarious and villainous. While we know the X Men and Xavier as heroes, and while the event is presented as unquestionably mythic perhaps even miraculous, the moral quality of it, and of Xavier’s wider actions, isn’t clear. But again this is an ambiguity of inclusion rather than one of either/or; it merges the masculine and feminine, rejecting the boundaries set between them, rather than asking which is which. So I take this moral ambiguity similarly; not as a question “is Xavier right or wrong?” but as suggesting there are both morally “right” and morally “wrong” elements to these events(and to the comic series proper), existing side-by-side.

All of this ties into the theme of cycles, and from there into repetition and rebirth. A Cycle has phases which can seem to be in opposition(day and night, for instance) but which are actually part of a larger whole, leading one to the other. Death and Life are one such seeming opposition; living things die, an end for them, but that end feeds other living things. Life feeds from itself through death, to perpetuate itself in new beginnings. Appropriately this ties back into the mythic elements: the best guess as to what the Eleusinian Mysteries --dedicated to the Chthonic deities Demeter, Persephone, and Plouton-- were about was the descent, stay, and ascent of Persephone to and from Hades; in other words the cycle of life, death, and new life(though there doesn’t seem to be agreement over whether this was new life or an afterlife in the scholarship. Given the much under-discussed, and under-recorded, Greek belief in reincarnation, it could have easily been either).

All of which raises a central question: Is Xavier Banging that Tree :| (I kid, I kid! What can I say but: Comedy demands  -___-)

[shakingotforshakespeare]

Ok it might be a stretch but I have a theory that Shakespeare actually subtly villainises the Christians, which makes Shylock the tragic hero. The ode in itself isn’t new - a lot of productions are called Shylock (the merchant of venice) but the way I got to it is very complicated and that’s why it’s such a stretch.

1. Norse mythology. Let’s start with Leah’s ring - it reminds me of the cursed ring of Andvari “no one wins joy with my wealth” anyone who owns that ring is cursed and in Act V Jessica and Lorenzo are talking about all these mythological lovers - Troillus and Cressida, Pyramus and Thsibe, Dido and Aenas, Jason and Medea - all of which end in tragedy. So foreshadowing. In the myth Andvari (who’s a dwarf by the way and Jews in fantasy lands are often depicted as dwarfs eg the Hobbit, goblins in Harry Potter plus Andvari himself says that he has no home and slays has to wonder waterfall to waterfall) was robbed by Loki.

Myth 2: Loki’s wager. Loki loses a bet to the dwarves in which he staked his head. So as the dwarves move to behead him he quickly stops them by saying - ‘you’ve got the right to my head, but not to my neck’ and there’s no way to behead him without touching his neck. Sound familiar? ‘Take your flesh, but don’t spill a drop of blood’

In both cases Shylock is a dwarf and the Christians are Loki - the god of mischief and cunning and all that bad stuff. He killed Balder for no reason except maybe pettiness.

This theory hinges on Shakespeare knowing Norse mythology, which he did as Hamlet is actually inspired by it.

2. Shylock is repeatedly compared to a wolf in the play. Critics often compare Antonio to Jesus, who is symbolized in art as a lamb. There is a fable about a wolf and a lamb - a hungry wolf tries to justify eating this baby lamb by saying that someone of his kind must’ve done something bad to the wolves. At first glance it seems to capture the scene perfectly with some critics reading his famous ‘hath not a Jew eyes’ speech as providing excuses for his bloodlust

However - visually it is Shylock who is outnumbered (the wolf is much bigger than the lamb, after all). Plus it’d be ironic if he was the lamb in this scenario: he has never done anything to Portia, Bassanio or Graziano personally. Portia has no reason for continuing to punish him after she saved Antonio - there were no bad feeling between her and Shylock personally. Plus the wolf’s excuse being someone of your race did something to me or someone from mine sounds a lot like the ‘reason’ Christians hate Jews - your ancestors sentences Jesus to die so now we hate everyone from your race.

This hinges on two things: Shakespeare knowing the fables and needing to weave the message subtly.

He did know the fables as we can see in Richard II

There was need for subtlety due to the strict censorship and fear - Marlowe was killed in suspicious circumstances after some groups quoted his plays to make an anti-govt point.

Why would he do this though?

This is even more far fetched than the theory above but here goes:

The magic number of the play is three: three women three caskets three rings three three thousand ducats three months three marriages three plot lines... so it’s kind of weird that only 2 Abrahimic religions are in conflict. At the time when Europe was fighting the Ottoman Empire Shakespeare could’ve included a Muslim villain and have the Christian fight them both on and win showing that there’s only one true religion or whatever the Elisabethans wanted to think. But he didn’t do that so that makes me think that the issue isn’t actually between Jews and Christians but between Catholics and Protestants and he’s showing how unfairly the Catholics are treated. There are many theories out there that Shakespeare was Catholic. No definitive proof but the amount of interest in the matter is telling in itself. But he couldn’t talk about it plainly cause that would be considered as treason

What are your thoughts on the representation of Jews in The Merchant of Venice? It's one of my favorite plays but I read an article a couple of weeks ago saying that this play shouldn't be performed nowadays for this reason, and now I don't know how to feel about it.

This is a pretty big topic, one that a tumblr post can’t possibly do justice to. But I’ll give it my best. If you want to know about Jewishness in Shakespeare more generally, I recommend the seminal book by James Shapiro: Shakespeare and the Jews.

I don’t know the specific reasoning behind the article you read, but anyone who suggests a play shouldn’t be performed because of something it depicts tends to be well-meaning but misguided. Censorship of works of art suggests that one isn’t allowed to depict anything other than an idealised and dreamy wonder world of brotherhood and love, which is certainly not the one we live in. In other words, these kinds of judgements make the basic assumption that art needs to be moral, which is often the justification for art, but one that is not necessarily true for great works of art.

So even if the play were rampantly anti-Semitic, I’m not certain that it shouldn’t be performed. But is it anti-Semitic? You will always find people who say that The Merchant of Venice glorifies anti-Semitism, and there’s absolutely no doubt that there are depictions of anti-Semitic abuse in the play. Antonio doesn’t even try and deny that he spat on Shylock’s gaberdine and called him a dog: ‘I am as like to call thee so again’ (1.3.126), and what the Christians do to Shylock at the end is inexcusable. If you’re talking about the representation of Jews in general, you certainly can’t deny that Shylock is not a nice guy, but many of the ‘Christians’ are dickwads too. It’s also important to remember that Shylock isn’t a representation of all Jews. There’s only one other Jewish person in the play, Tubal (excepting Jessica, who converts), and there is nothing inherently villainous about the depiction of Tubal. He’s just another Jewish moneylender in Venice.

Just because it contains anti-Semitic people, instances of anti-Semitism, and a particularly horrible Jewish person, it doesn’t mean that the play itself is anti-Semitic. In fact, I think that the play problematises the inherently social problem of discrimination and segregation, not through the actions or opinions of the characters, but structurally.

You see, as the play goes on, it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate between the merchant and the lender, the Christians and Shylock. Shylock makes money from usury, which is problematic for many reasons, including the fact that no actual labour goes into his moneymaking. But is this so different from what Antonio the investment merchant, does? And that’s precisely the point, because it shows that distinctions are arbitrary. There is no essential difference between Shylock and the other Venetians. It’s no mistake, that when Portia comes in as Balthazar in the trial scene, she needs to ask ‘which is the merchant here, and which the Jew?’ (4.1.171). And if that wasn’t clear enough, you have that wonderfully powerful and moving speech that Shakespeare puts into Shylock’s mouth, the kind you certainly wouldn’t see in a play like Marlowe’s Jew of Malta:

Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? (3.1.55-63)

Shylock, in the spirit of revenge and justification, can’t possibly realise the full egalitarian implication of this speech; but what it points out is that at a fundamental level, the Christians and the Jews share the same human, corporeal existence. The differences are social fabrications.

And what do these social fabrications do? What is the point of the insistent differentiation between Jew and Christian? It’s an age-old reason: identity is created through exclusion, and one can validate one’s own actions by condemning others’. So what the Christians dislike in Shylock is what they see of themselves. It irritates Antonio when Shylock points out that one day he treats Jewish people like dogs, the next he wants their money: ‘What should I say to you? Should I not say / “Hath a dog money? Is it possible / A cur can lend three thousand ducats?”’ (1.3.117-9). Even more obvious is his speech in the court scene:

What judgement shall I dread, doing no wrong?You have among you many a purchased slaveWhich, like your asses and your dogs and mules, You use in abject and in slavish parts,Because you bought them. Shall I say to you,‘Let them be free, marry them to your heirs.Why sweat they under burdens? Let their beds Be made as soft as yours, and let their palates Be seasoned with such viands’? You will answer‘The slaves are ours’. So do I answer you.The pound of flesh which I demand of himIs dearly bought: ‘tis mine, and I will have it.If you deny me, fie upon your law! (4.1.88-100)

Shylock only asks to do as the Christians do. To have the same rights and laws: ‘The villainy you teach me I will execute’ (3.1.67-9). If the depiction of Jewish people is problematic, then so is the depiction of the hypocritical ‘Christians’. Shylock may be a bad man, but not any more than the Christians in this play. What can be more telling than the fact that when it comes to her turn to be merciful, Portia shows not a drop of mercy, for all her talk of ‘the quality of mercy’? In this light, the forced conversion of Shylock at the end says less about the treatment of Jews by the play than it does about the other characters and their need to annihilate their opposition, to disempower him completely. I don’t know and can’t know what Shakespeare himself thought of Jewish people, but I don’t believe the play as a whole endorses the action of these hypocrites.

So I think there’s something more fundamental going on here, which goes beyond the question of how Jewishness is depicted and onto why such depictions happen in the first place.

The way I see it, there is absolutely no problem with liking The Merchant of Venice. It’s a powerful, admirable play that, performed well, and read well, transcends and critiques prejudice and discrimination.

[zenosanalytic]

Reply-Replies to Purified-Zone: Wonder Woman Replies

purified-zone said:

I don’t think her destroying a church was necessarily pro-pagan or anti-church, it was just a casualty of warfare like any other because the setting was that: everything is being destroyed anyway. This is why I was fine with there being so much killing unlike in BvS where it’s not really “justified” at all  

Yeah they probably didn’t mean it that way but I just got a bevy of chuckles out of the sheer preponderance of imagery in that direction. I mean: sniper hiding in a church being a danger to the whole community, literal(in the movie at least, I’m pretty sure she’s not in the comics though I don’t really follow them) Olympian goddess smashing said church to rid the community of danger, then standing atop ruins of said church as the towns people cheer her and heavenly light streams down from behind her. That’s bordering on heavy-handed.

all the Olympians being “dead” (or better—never actually existed, the TRUE mythology being a mystery instead) would be more interesting than Ares being responsible for WW1

Ehh. Though, yeah, I agree with the idea of Ares being responsible for WWI being pretty asinine. Though the movie’s a bit confused here too: he says he’s not responsible for the war and he’s not making people fight, only suggesting weapons and tactics that they can choose to use to make it more horrible, but then the moment he’s dead those German soldiers pull off their masks, surrender, and everyone stops fighting. So which is it: was Ares just capitalizing on human nature to suggest ways people who’ve already decided to do terrible things can be worse, or was his influence actually causing people to fight, and by defeating him Diana ensured the armistice would succeed? Diana’s conclusion is that people suck but they can also be pretty great too, and you’ve just got to believe in that pretty greatness, and work to promote it, not that Ares was behind it all and that without him the war wouldn’t have existed. Like I said, I think they could have done something more interesting with an Ares storyline, but the movie would have been more consistent if there was no Ares, or if “Ares” as just war-itself, was the real villain, and preserving the armistice that allowed WWI to finally end the real victory she achieves. I get that Ares is her actual nemesis in the comics series, but how they included him here just didn’t work for me, and he looked just silly in that final fight.

Speaking of the brainspace part, the entire time I was hoping for a Nolanian (for lack of a better word, I don’t know film very well. Insert appropriate synonym for psyche-out) mindfuck where it turns out the entire battle was a hallucination. I was hoping Ares was a hallucination the moment he disappeared from the window in that one scene

I don’t think him being a hallucination would have worked, but that fight did feel kinda weird and off. Like, nobody but Steve and his team seemed to be paying any attention to it and they’re setting off these massive explosions and tearing the place apart. I kinda felt like the Germans were interpreting it as a bombing raid or sabotage or something, which how could you do that when there’s two people flying around flinging stuff at each other and telekineting the runway into projectiles? So the idea of it being not entirely physical, or something slightly outside mortal comprehension which people not in the know couldn’t entirely perceive almost seemed a bit implied with how it played out, to me. Who knows, maybe they batted around an idea like that but then decided to go for a conventional superhero final showdown, or maybe that sort of reaction was just convenient plot-wise.

I don’t enjoy there being One True Pantheon (the greek one) because that’s less interesting than a world where all religious beliefs have some chance of being considered. it’s less interesting than a world where it is still a mystery where Themyscira REALLY came from 

similar to how it is more interesting for us not to know where the Space Jockey came from rather than they inexplicably making the Alien universe infinitely smaller by making them the creators of humanity                            

I’m not saying “One True Pantheon”. Never at any point in their history did the Greeks ever say their gods were the “only REAL” gods, and including them in a fictional setting doesn’t bar you from including any other god you like, or even making them something other than divine(or “top tier” divine) beings(ala Marvel’s Asgard... And their Olympus and Olympians, to be honest), so that you can leave space for an ultimately ambiguously Abrahimic/atheistic universe like DC and Marvel have conventionally done. I’m just saying I didn’t feel like having them killed off served any purpose storywise for the movie(and I’d add it also hurts her chances for solo sequels, since most of WW’s enemies are associated with myth, Ares, and the Olympian pantheon in someway or another). The same effect could have been accomplished in other ways, and the path they chose -getting close enough to WW canon to preserve aspects of her origin, throw others into doubt(like her fabrical creation), but veering away from it where it might suggest something other than a currently monotheistic cosmology- was just... Meh. And I fully realize that this is the sort of complaint very few people are going to have, so no surprise that the filmmakers didn’t give consideration for this particular sensibility pride-of-place in their decision making.

I forgot to finish my thought on the hallucination part! Whoops! The point I was trying to get to was that one part where Diana rewinds her memories mid-battle to what Steve said—I was hoping so hard that was a psyche-out retconning the battle as something of a mental projection by Diana meant as a mental battle of ideas To Learn A Lesson so as to change the outcome of Steve Dying

Oh! Ok. HHHHHHMMMMMMmmm idontknow. I feel like that would have been super gimmicky and led to a lot of “it was all a dream” complaints. And -though I guess this undercuts all such psychedelic conclusions like the one I mentioned- I don’t think the movie really established its world and setting as the sort of place that kind of thing would happen in.

also why did Steve have to die I don’t understand why that was necessary 

Honestly, I think it’s because Steve Rogers “died” heroically flying a plane away from where it could do any harm in First Avenger. It was such a callback. Like really, the whole ending was pretty superfluous, but that aspect was especially bad. Like, if the flammability of the gas allows them to blow it up safely with no poison possibility, then why couldn’t they just blow it up on the ground with a grenade? Why couldn’t he just jump out with a parachute after flying it high up? If it’s effective range of threat was 50 miles centered on the point of release, then why didn’t they all die anyway considering the atmosphere does not extend 50 miles up? Like I said, I feel like you cannot make a WWI movie that doesn’t deal with loss since SO MANY PEOPLE died in that war and the sheer volume of the dead was probably its most remembered impact, and in that context I can see justifying Steve’s death, but having him die a heroic martyr, and therefore a war-glorifying one, like he did in the movie wasn’t necessary, and also undercut his character. Like, the whole point of it was just to include your conventional war-story sacrifice glorification, and it’s premise is literally an anti-war one, so that’s kinda ill-done.

But, having said all that, I still liked the movie. It wove action and humor together excellently, and I enjoyed the sensibility of it a heck of a lot more than that found in most action blockbusters. It wasn’t a cruel movie in anyway, it didn’t make fun of or belittle people and, while I did feel the treatment of them was rushed through, it acknowledged the downsides of violence and conflict through Charlie, Chief, Sameer(I mean, it’s not stated, but he’s probably North African and in Europe because of how inhospitable colonialism made his homeland), and the suffering of the civilians we see. The camera work was non-skeezy, the bath scene with Steve was So Good, playing on the humor and awkwardness in the situation, and in Diana’s curiosity&lack of physical shame(and thus obliviousness to Steve’s), without being objectifying or creepy; presenting Steve as vulnerable without being creepy or denigrating or acquisitive about it(again, most other action movies when it comes to women).

It’s a good, entertaining movie it’s just that philosophically, and aside from its a++ peopleing and gender politics, it left me a bit dissatisfied.