“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Saturday, June 9, 2012

Prometheus as Speculative Realism: A Black Metal Movie

Finally in Houston, where enormous cinemas proffer their wares. Went to see Prometheus in 3-D. Nasties jumping out at you and so on, tremendous depth, etc.

I don't wish to put any plot spoilers here. But I think you will dig it if you are into speculative realism. Thinking the human beyond the human, and then ... (well, okay I'm not going to go there). And the whole thing aesthetically looks like the cover of a Wolves in the Throne Room record. The boiling, roiling, complex water and rock.

The very first scene is a subarctic environment of waterfalls and rocks and ice, with a robed and hooded figure standing on the edge of a chasm, who turns to be ...

And three cheers for the protagonist, a woman archaeologist who ...

And of course the teetering on, and falling over the edge of, nihilism.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

This is funny, because I was going to ask that you write a post about "Prometheus" had you not already done so - and here it is.

seanpdudley said...

I, personally, thought Prometheus was far less than a good film; the logic of the plot was simply ridiculous.

All the same, I found a review of the film which I thought lent itself very well to stirrings of 'The Ecological Thought.' Consider this quote:

"Soon, the Earth, too, will be spawning its own nagas, asuras and Xenomorphs which it will send against us in the form of the various nature disasters that will slowly dismantle the edifice of technological civilization piece by piece, bit by bit. The alien that burst out of the technological exoskeleton that has confined it is a direct parallel with the Earth’s ecosystems that will burst out of the egg of the planetary scale technoskeleton that we have built as an attempt to capture, encode and control it by systems of dominant engineering."

The entire review, by John David Ebert, can be found here: http://www.cinemadiscourse.com/

David said...

Prometheus would get the Oscar for Best Tentacle Fellatio Scene of 2012 were this an admissible category. I liked the mutant biohorror stuff (minus the crappy zombie). The weakest part was the writing. Scott has filmed some pretty distinguished scripts. There's nary a false beat in Alien. But this had some godawful lines - "I believe it because I choose to" Pl-eeease.

David said...

Prometheus would get the Oscar for Best Tentacle Fellatio Scene of 2012 were this an admissible category. I liked the mutant biohorror stuff (minus the crappy zombie). The weakest part was the writing. Scott has filmed some pretty distinguished scripts. There's nary a false beat in Alien. But this had some godawful lines - "I believe it because I choose to" Pl-eeease.