#and people tend to take a 'lack' or proof that none exists instead of acknowledging agap in research

[timeisacephalopod]

Lol my therapist told me I should start a podcast because I went on a rant about how the way we view The Expert(tm) is inherently flawed and doesn’t often acknowledge the preexisting power imbalances that result in people being unable to ‘prove’ their expertise with academic sourcing or degrees or whatnot, meaning what a minority opinion has to say on a matter is often ignored in favor of the status quo.

Anyway, I could go on for hours about this topic so maybe I will start a podcast.

[ahopefuldoubt]

Aaron and Rameses Parallels in The Prince of Egypt

based on a few points from this list (jul.-aug. 2016).  written between dec. 2016 and jan. 2017.  originally posted in 2017 [x].

An interesting parallel between Aaron and Rameses seems to occur about midway into the movie, doing so off-screen:

While Moses is in Midian, both take up more prominent roles in their respective communities.  Rameses becomes Pharaoh of Egypt, and Aaron assumes the position of doubtful spokesman for the Hebrew people*.  Because the throne room scene with Moses and Rameses is followed by the mud pit scene with Aaron and Moses, these changes get revealed in succession, creating a nice opportunity to explore the characters themselves as well as their dynamic.

There’s some dramatic irony where Rameses is concerned.  Those who are familiar with the story know that he is the pharaoh whom Moses must contest.  However, for the characters, the situation is ambiguous, and their reunion is therefore able to cover a lot of emotional ground.  Moses comes back to Egypt to discover that his brother has taken their father’s seat, and suddenly his mission from God takes on a much heavier dimension — “Pharaoh will not listen,” but perhaps Moses hopes that the brother he’s always loved and respected will.  And Rameses is none the wiser, secure in his authority and bemused by Moses’ humble appearance.  Their amicable acknowledgement of the past and present quickly turns into a tense hint at the future.

On the other hand, Aaron is a surprise to Moses and the audience.  Not only does his assertiveness in the mud pit scene seem sudden, but the overall changes from the source material are also unexpected.  And here is a reverse parallel of sorts: In reviews, the movie’s alternate take on Rameses and Moses’ personal relationship is often considered a unique addition, whereas the differences made to Aaron’s character are thought of as a curious reduction.  Aaron is an important Jewish figure whose admired qualities include his positive relationship with his younger brother (a notable contrast from all the fraternal strife in the Book of Genesis), so in that regard I understand people’s disappointment.  But his shift from being fearfully vigilant, to calling for justice, to taking the first steps into the Red Sea is compelling, and in my opinion it humanizes him in a meaningful way (just as the other characters have been humanized for this film).  It also means that, like Rameses, he must navigate his past, present, and future relationship with Moses — though it’s one that has a rather different history and track.

The directors cite practical reasons for changing Aaron’s part, as it allows Moses to maintain agency (e.g., Moses performs all of miracles and plagues instead of delegating the first few to Aaron, as happens in the Book of Exodus) and puts a better focus on his conflict with Rameses.  Personally, I think that the Rameses-to-Pharaoh, Aaron-to-spokesman transition also gives them this more immediate sense of opposition, or greater approximation (and makes me feel all the more deeply about certain lines of dialogue**).  Maybe, in some odd way, it’s a small nod to the story in the Book of Exodus.

Representing Aaron as someone who frets and questions things brings me to the next parallel, which is that now both brothers are skeptics of God and of Moses.  In The Prince of Egypt, Moses must convince them both (to very different ends, of course).  There are moments in the reunion scenes where their responses to Moses sound alike in topic and tone:

Rameses

I do not know this God.  Neither will I let your people go.

Aaron

God?  When did God start caring about any of us?

Here they sound angry and faithless, but it’s another similarity that separates them, I feel, since their doubt in and experiences with God differ quite a bit.

In reaction to the conditions of slavery, the persistent threat to their lives, Aaron has turned to wondering, bitterly and from a place of anguish/fear, if God has abandoned them.  Moses’ return means many things to Aaron, and the unintended outcome of Moses’ confrontation with Rameses probably seems like further proof that God does not care.  Rameses, on the other hand, has no experience with the God of the Hebrew people.  To admit inexperience with something isn’t necessarily bad; however, he speaks about God and those who practice the faith as the Other.  Moses’ return means many things to Rameses, too, and Rameses perceives God — and even/eventually Moses — as a challenge to his sovereignty.

Beyond the parallels discussed in this post are others that visually and auditorially connect Aaron and Rameses.  Serious and cautious***, Moses’ brothers tend to carry many troubles and hold on to negative events from the past.  It’s possible to treat Rameses as a prisoner of tradition, or a victim of his family and God’s wrath.  It’s possible to criticize Aaron for his fears and lack of faith in God.  But neither is fully or fairly illustrative of who they are as characters.  (For me, that interpretation of Rameses absolves him of too much responsibility.  And that reading of Aaron causes too much oversight of his courage and compassion.)  Indeed, it’s important also to recognize the choices they make in the film and the paths they walk.  I think that there, too, lies a vast difference between them.

* From here: It’s worth noting that Aaron’s role throughout the film is representing his people’s doubts and concerns.  But I also think it’s something that develops as he grows/ages…

** I’m referring to the line, “Pharaoh still has the power over our lives.”  Also, as I note here [link to be added], there’s really no film-canon evidence that Rameses even knows of Aaron’s or Miriam’s existence.  This is interesting to me because it deviates from the Book of Exodus, in which Aaron deals with Pharaoh directly.  But, it’s also interesting because of course viewers know how all the characters in the film version are related, and I feel that fans like to project some kind of “rivalry” onto the brothers, usually boiling down to which one is the “real” brother.  The line of dialogue above helps underline the grossly uneven power dynamic between Rameses (Pharaoh/Egypt) and Aaron (the Hebrew people).... and this dynamic is one of the many reasons why any “rivalry” over “real brother” status will never sit right with me — especially if it's one that disparages Aaron (to be frank).

*** “Cautious” describes Rameses as a teenager.  He loses his uncertainty and self-doubt when he becomes an adult — though he’s still afraid of being “the weak link.”  Aaron remains cautious into adulthood, and the source of his uncertainty is markedly different.  Not to keep belaboring a point, but Rameses does not want to lose power (at the same time, he doesn’t believe that his power can be threatened); Aaron is afraid of losing his life (losing Miriam, losing everything).  [2019 edit] I might also need to rewrite this sentence with a word other than “serious” because I don’t think it’s quite the right word.  But I know there must have been a reason why I used it.

i’ll probably be adding a few notes to this space, so… stay tuned.  [eta] here are some:

This is a multi-pronged subject, and rather than address the adoption aspects, I decided to concentrate more on the themes, character motivations, dialogue, etc. of/in the movie itself.  I tried to think about the implications of the changes that were made to the original story; I’m sure a lot of it is conjecture on my part (but reasonable conjecture?).  While writing I also discovered even more depth to the story and characters… which I worry I didn’t include enough of in this post…

I don’t know if I’m going to do another one of these, though I’d like to… and back in August [2016] I did start to write an analysis of a parallel from the first half of the movie, which would examine more directly Aaron’s and Rameses’ relationships with Moses (as well *clears throat loudly* as Aaron’s with Miriam).  And of course the adoption stuff is always on my mind.  It’s natural to want to show and seek out similarities and differences between the biological and adoptive families in The Prince of Egypt, especially since the characters and their relationships are so rich.  At times, the movie draws conscious comparisons: for example, having baby Moses grasp Yocheved’s finger, and later, Tuya’s.  I probably tend to view things through a more critical, and personal, lens, but I’ve also given much thought to these parallels.  And as usual, there’s just a lot I’d like to write about the siblings…

Last edited: 2/23/17; 1/8/19, some clarifications

[2019 2020 notes and thoughts] Where to begin?  I thought I’d have the time to edit this, but I didn’t, so I’ll write more notes later:

Added, in italics: Aaron is an important Jewish figure whose admired qualities include his positive relationship with his younger brother (a notable contrast from all the fraternal strife in the Book of Genesis).

It’s a bit hard to come back to this after another year has passed, mostly because I don’t remember what I was going to write.  I think I had changed this sentence to reflect some of what I learned between 2017, which is when I wrote this analysis originally, and 2019.  I wanted to make a more specific statement about Aaron being a Jewish figure and ancestor, as well as pull in some Torah interpretation and midrash (for example, that Aaron embraces Moses right away, when he could or might have been more steely towards him; and that the two have a very different partnership and relationship than do Joseph and his brothers, Jacob and Esau, Leah and Rachel ( (“sororal” is a word I didn’t know), etc.).

[warsofasoiaf]

Any chance you want to give us some analysis of the psychologist and chaplain on the Unity, Sister Miriam? Reynold did a pretty solid job making her more than some crazy protestant fundamentalist, and some of her "We Must Dissent" critiques on how technology is being applied have a tinge of your own cynicism, although filtered through the lens of an extreme evangelical.

Miriam is one controversial character. On the surface, she’s a Bible-thumping fundamentalist, her preferred government choice is even called “Fundamentalist,” her facial expression even seems to scream: “Jesus is watching you.” Yet this does the writers a deep disservice, as evidenced by the other factions, they are capable of writing fully-realized characters and philosophies.

We don’t get an actual declaration of what sect of Christianity Miriam, or even what ecumenical form Christianity took at the time the Unity took off, all we know is that apparently the United States transformed into a theocracy at some point, so it’s probably some sect of Protestantism. Truth be told, it doesn’t actually matter whether we do or not, Miriam expresses herself well enough through her own quotes. She tends to express herself primarily in two ways, fierce condemnation of reckless progress without regard to morality, and a softer, comforting tone likely given among her own flock. This is key for Miriam, she cares about her people in a way that faction heads do not. Morgan, Santiago, and Zakharov see the virtue of their progress as proof of its intrinsic morality, Yang is nihilistic, Deidre is rushing off so much with her plants and fungus that she’s losing touch with her humanity, and Lal is bureaucratic, impersonal, and more than a bit hypocritical, concerned with style over substance. Miriam wants to ensure that the spiritual wellbeing of her citizens is protected, and she truly practices what she preaches: “And so we return again to the holy void. Some say this is simply our destiny, but I would have you remember always that the void EXISTS, just as surely as you or I. Is nothingness any less a miracle than substance?” The fate of humanity is ever precarious and Miriam knows that people can be pushed close to the breaking point, and she is there with the balm of Gilead to get people to feel better. Her people believe in her too, they’re more than willing to support a large military before feeling discontent and fight hard to accomplish her goals. More than any other faction, Miriam expresses sympathy for the downtrodden. On the other side, she is strict and condemnatory toward others who refuse her message and her AI is fairly aggressive. In this sense she still has that sort of militant preacher vibe, but it’s to the credit of the writers that they took this archetype and fleshed it out. Like every other faction, Miriam has her strengths and her weaknesses, things she can be lauded for and criticized.

One of the big criticisms levelled at Miriam is that she is either a Luddite, a technophobe, or suspicious of science itself. She is none of these, her approach to research stems from a true sense of social conservatism. After all, she’s a psychologist and she understands the chemical states of matter, she is both clearly educated in multiple scientific disciplines and has no intrinsic distrust of science: “Evil lurks in the datalinks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear. But it was never the streets that were evil.” This quote suggests that she considers the datalinks evil in and of themselves, but other quotes give her a more complete picture. Look at this selection of quotes from her key work, “We Must Dissent,” her treatise castigating the technological development of the other factions: 

“Already we have turned all of our critical industries, all of our material resources, over to these… things… these lumps of silver and paste we call nanorobots. And now we propose to teach them intelligence? What, pray tell, will we do when these little homunculi awaken one day and announce that they have no further need for us?”

“And what of the immortal soul in such transactions? Can this machine transmit and reattach it as well? Or is it lost forever, leaving a soulless body to wander the world in despair?”

“Will we next create false gods to rule over us? How proud we have become, and how blind.”

Miriam is clear, she wants others to think about what they’re doing. The pursuit of progress without being cognizant of the risks and costs arguably helped contribute to the catastrophe of Earth. What things have the labtechs at the University of Planet failed to take into account, what corners did Morgan cut in pursuit of the next great product, what happens to the mental state of people in Deidre’s psychic networks? She celebrates beneficial advances in technology, she even refers to the plasma accretion process creating “new miracles,” she’s afraid of it’s misuse. That’s why she doesn’t accumulate research points in the first couple years and that’s why her research is slow. Sure, there is less funding for laboratories over churches as well, but her greatest concern is to understand how these changes will effect the psychology of her people and of the society at large. The end-game techs are in no uncertain terms terrifying. Controlled singularities, self-aware colonies, molecular reassembly, all of these things improperly considered are an extinction level event on their own, but each faction continues to roll them out, eager for gain, not knowing what next they will unleash because they lack the wisdom of restraint. Her dichotomy is best summed up in two quotes: “Beware, you who seek first and final principles, for you are trampling the garden of an angry God, and He awaits you just beyond the last theorem.” This sounds like a fire-and-brimstone street preacher, but it’s the other quote that accompanies Quantum mechanics that is exceptional: “Men in their arrogance claim to understand the nature of creation, and devise elaborate theories to describe its behavior. But always they discover in the end that God was quite a bit more clever than they thought.“ The proof is in the pudding there, while the former appears to be direct and so a bit of fiery language can be expected, this appears to be a reflection or philosophy. Mankind is flawed and refusal to accept it leads to catastrophe.

Protestantism doesn’t have a Pope or Patriarch and instead professes a universal priesthood, suggesting that Miriam’s administration is modeled with theological and secular components, influencing the other but not under the direction of a religious caste. A Democratic Miriam loosens the restrictions and military funding for greater promotion of the self through community and activity, while a Police State Miriam utilizes a state of emergency and herself as governmental head to act in preservation of her people and their souls. Miriam preserves fundamentalism, which likely strips funding from labs in the interests of devoting the majority of the social fabric to religious concerns and the totality of existence as universal believers, protecting them from foreign influence without becoming the paranoid police state of informants that a Bloodraven might promote.

Economically, Miriam forbids nothing. A Planned Economy probably is fashioned similar to Christian communialism through common ownership and shared industry, justified in sermons and enforced through a small army of bureaucratic clerks. A Free Market Miriam resembles the American South, with an emphasis on charitable giving and a strong sense of community. A Green Miriam acknowledges that resources are limited and so encourages thrift and voluntary deprivation for the sake of the community, using less so that others might have more as proscribed by Christian virtues.

Miriam forbids Knowledge as a value, and this makes sense given what is mentioned above, pursuit of knowledge for its own sake makes one heedless to its risks. If Miriam values power, she has probably come to accept the necessity of a holy war as the only way to save mankind from its own recklessness. Wealth Miriam likely focuses more upon the prosperity gospel, where good people gain money through goodness, build industry to employ others, and so on.

A Cybernetic Miriam probably has increasing automation to permit others freedom in their tasks and devote themselves more completely to other matters, but this doesn’t sound appealing to Miriam who fears the machine rising against the master. A Eudaimonic Miriam is almost certainly the one she would elect to pursue, finally creating the paradise on Planet and letting people live in goodness, good in word, good in thought, good in action, good in faith. Thought Control is again, a sinister one, the people finally rendered docile believers, where Shepherd Miriam finally has her flock, where sin is such an evil that it must be prevented at all costs, though if I had seen Miriam do this, the last thing I would say before I was invariably hauled off to the Punishment Sphere is: “And what of the immortal soul?”

Thanks for the question, TBH.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King