I don’t know if
you recall the film Royal Kill (Ninja’s Creed) from C14?
It has an oddly abstract air, which probably put off reviewers. The world we
live in, though, IS fantastically abstract – we don’t hunt for food, we barely
see the agrarian process, we’re attached to smartphones and detached from
meaningful cycles of creation and destruction (Quetzalcoatl).
An abstract
world has no acquaintance with death since it is essentially just words on
paper, or marks on a screen; the emanations of the mind, or AI or a combination
of the two. What if that world is a fantasy, and the kinetic grace of life and
death is reality?
The film appears
to be a game – which is a fantasy – and yet the story and the music belong with
the game and not to the bland abstraction of the city-lights and sounds.
The things which
make modern life real are abstract qualities of order and predictability
(straight-line progress) – the very things which in nature are unreal! The
physical reality of nature is life and death, much like the game played against
Nadia, the ninja assassin in the film.
This reality
turns out to be a fantasy, in that Adam (the protector and good guy) and Nadia
(the assassin and evil) toward the end become one entity. At that point, Morita
says, “Are you ready?” and Adam returns to his life as a security guard (for
Morita).
That sequence in
the film is the most lurid and cheapso visual effects of all, but if one is
distracted by that one may miss vital clues. For instance, his flat is nothing
ordinary in that there are hanging Persian (magic) carpets. He lifts one and
underneath is a tome on an 11th century hero, the figure who
appeared at the start.
The entire story
of the princess you can then take as an 11th century fantasy that he
plays out. He also says, the worst thing in the world is “an ordinary life”. At
the conclusion, another American guardian (woman) and girl appear at the park,
and so there is a circular plot a la Watchmen.
The real
question is: is the abstract “reality” we live in fantasy or reality? In the
film, the only way Adam can escape from mundanity is to imagine a fantasy world
akin to Hyboria. But if our “reality” is false or fantasy, the Hyborian-style
fantasy has more music and kinetic story – which makes it emotionally real.
This is played-out
in the performances, with Lalaine’s (the girl/princess) anguished “Adam!?” as
his conflicting nature is revealed. Is a “reality” which is emotionally and
musically insipid actually NOT reality? (I often note that contemporary pop has
an almost asexual nullifier!)
The real problem
is one can’t “prove” anything because at the root of things – quantum physics –
things are plumb weird. All one can do is go on a hunch and follow it through. Back
in Hyborian Bridge 48 I did make an analogy between a reflection in a
mirror (Alice Through the Looking Glass) and Relativity. In a reflection,
everything is relative to the speed of light in that what you are looking at is
simply beams of light (not physical reality).
Is it fair, then, to say that a reflection in a mirror is simply the
most basic example of relativity? Secondly, any razor-sharp image we see on our
smartphones is a reflection; it’s not inverted – as a mirror is – but all it
takes is two mirrors reflecting eachother to see an image the right way round.
So, electronic images are just electronic reflections; there’s no
difference. Thirdly, electronics is the medium of mathematics; ie. all the
algorithms fed into computers. Hyborian Bridge 48 quotes Einstein..
"As far as the laws of mathematics
refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do
not refer to reality."
..What that
means is, if everything were mathematical it wouldn’t be reality (nature is not
a product of reason, prev). IE mathematics is certain mathematically only.
The physical
reality we live in is clearly not mathematical since it is proportionate,
strong and virile, tigerish (like Nadia). The kinetic reality depicted in Royal
Kill is more medieval or Hyborian than it is modern; there is dynastic
loyalty and servitude, heroism.
The real point
is that a pin-sharp image – whether we see it on a smartphone or via a
radio-telescope – is not physical reality. It is a reflection. The black hole
observed recently (Hyborian Bridge 56 Katie Bouman) was a combination of
mirrors and algorithms. What “they” are observing is the universe seen through
lenses – another type of mirror that reflects or refracts light.
In other words,
a universe of reflections, that is relativistic, is also mathematical. Going by
Einstein’s quote, that means it could be a fantasy. It’s not certain
physically, only mathematically. Again, CERN is another example of a
“hygiene-machine” (Pictorial 44) that sees things mathematically (only)
so could be fantasy.
Whether you call
it fact or mathematical data depends on your view (similarly, DNA is a
one-sided view of an abstraction, rather than the life and death reality of the
cosmos). Anything that is pin-sharp and super-accurate doesn’t exist in the
physical sense of bone, stone, star.
When “they” say
there is something called the “microcosm” (quantum physics) it cannot be seen
without observing it mathematically. It’s a mathematical construct (Kari Hohne
in The Mythology of Sleep says something very similar).
Therefore, then
only physical world is the one that we see from the Earth, Midgard, strung
midway between sun and moon. That is the unthinking world that – yes – one can
apply math to, but it is far more, and introspective to the wanderer under the
stars above. Unblemished by the thoughts of acolytes.
Here’e one
visual example of that disparity. The mathematical world can appear very
certain and resolved, like something on a microscope slide.
“where are
we?” “Search me”
It’s all above
board, except that it may lack the cosmic reality of the oceans and geography
of the coast. What this is really getting to is that the physical world (of
planets and moon and stars) allows for the moral or psyche. Starting from
Newton’s experiments with refracting knives, we live in an inductive universe
of experiment, and not in the physical universe that just is (C6 etc.)
The intense
physicality of Weird Tales can be seen as a rebellion against the
abstractions of a world built on light and electronics. A yearning for a
physical sense that is not just sexual but cosmic.
The Weird
Tales covers by Brundage are not merely sexy, they lust for more, they
identify with idols. Idols are representations of cosmic forces and balances of
Earth, man and woman.
