“You are not
an opponent, you are prey”
Strength and
love; blood and physical desirability. The honour-bound chivalric code that Royal
Kill in some ways resembles, till the sorcerous twist that joins good and
evil in unholy alliance.
One way to look
at it is that, while the Manichean struggle between good and evil may be torrid
and not a bundle of laughs, the unholy joining of the two (by sorcerous means)
is vastly worse and an aberration against nature.
When the two
opposites are bound there can be no conscience (religion) or codes-of-honour
(chivalry). Without those there is in effect nothing there save a scripted
routine; in this case the one written by Morita (who plays both the sorcerer
and Wraith’s employer at the end.)
The routine
denies freedom, free-expression of the individual, and you wonder if this is
the world we are actually in? I’ve already gone over some of this in the
post-civil rights America (Pictorial 46). The one city which was allowed
to develop its neighbourhoods independently (from federal law) was Detroit, and
I’ll leave it to you to make any comparisons you care to.
The entire
history of the West is the story of free-expression of the individual. The
horror and bloodshed are part of folklore, but so are conscience and codes-of-honour.
You can’t have one without the other. Rapine and bloodlust are not the product
of machines, they come from human hearts. Those hearts also have consciences,
and not all men and women are born without honour.
The history of
the West IS America in its primitive, irrational elemental soul. Those who deny
it are the sorcerers who wish to do without good or evil altogether, ie in the
joining of Man with machine (AI).
That
electromagnetic universe cannot have conscience or a code-of-honour (Alphaville
Alternates 4), only scripted routines in the immaterial world (of the
sun) not in the physical universe of moon and planets, cowboys and guitars,
wild girls and Indians.
As you may have
noticed, that archaic world is not only wild and free, but also full of animal
shapes that soar over mountain tops and thunder over plains. In other words,
primeval form as existed at the time of the dinosaurs (see “House of Elrig”).
The Dionysian abandon of free expressive action, maidens dancing with donkeys
in rites of spring (Pictorial 21
)
Michaelina Wautier, 17th century baroque artiste from the
Netherlands (where else?)
This is the reality of physical perfection in the primeval rhythms of the
cosmos. That is, the physical universe of cowboys and guitars on plains of yore
who follow no script; they are only conscious of the cosmos under the stars
above.
A script cannot also have primeval rhythm; the two cannot be reconciled.
The one thing that can be reconciled is poetry, be it Biblical or Red Nails.
That’s one reason I liked Royal Kill as it is so visual with a minimal
screenplay, leaving one to one’s own devices (like life?)
Scripts exist outside the physical universe of shape, in the immaterial
one of the mind of acolytes. Acolytes who are convinced of verifiable proofs
provided by lenses – microscopes, telescopes Hyborian Bridge 56, 61 (Conan the Conqueror) – of a universe we cannot see.
That universe is not physical; in other words, it has no primeval rhythm
of the planets as Earth rotates in space. Without the physical universe, the
psyche cannot be free to be what it wants to be; free of scripted routines of
an immaterial world of the minds of acolytes (of mainly dead sorcerers).