Huntsman Defending the Higher Ground

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The Origin of the Collapsitarian Narrative in the Breakdown of the Bifurcated Futurism

In bleak times, there is a boom in doom. 

Americans have long been fascinated by disaster scenarios, from the population explosion to the cold war to global warming. These days the doomers, as Mrs. Wilkerson jokingly calls herself and likeminded others, have a new focus: peak oil...
- Imagining Life Without Oil, and Being Ready (New York Times, June 5, 2010)

The Collapsitarian narrative has been with us for a long time and is unlikely to disappear anytime soon.

In modern memory its memetic lineage can be traced back to The Great Futurism Bifurcation of `68* when, in the spring of that year, two divergent visions of what may lie ahead began an epic battle to dominate the cognitive space of the West's cultural (and celluloid) spiritus mundi.

Early that April Stanley Kubrick & Arthur C. Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey" premiered, presenting visions of a crisp clean, technologically modern futurism where science offered solutions to all but the most fundamental metaphysical problems and a new species of starchild stood teetering on the brink of creation.

A week previously, Franklin Schaffner & Rod Serling's "Planet of the Apes" had debuted in theatres, offering a wholly contrasting vision of the the future; one primitive and backward, a post-apocalyptic, dead-end, post-collapse non-future of our own tragic making. Over the highly charged summer of 1968 these two rival visions would compete head-to-head on the western world's movie screens, setting the stage for a protracted turf war over our culture's mental landscape.

For the next 40 years these two narrative storylines would continue to develop along their separate paths; each memetic line evolving into its own distinct and specialized species, with its own framing patterns and expressions.

What would eventually develop into the Collapsitarian Narrative gained its toehold quickly, producing four more sequels over the following five years and even a Saturday morning cartoon series.

At that point the die was cast.  From Omega Man to Mad Max, from Terminator to Tank Girl this narrative frame, once developed, soon become ritualized in its traditions and self-perpetuating in it's memetic structure, birthing a sub-genre with a distinct vocabulary of imagery, concepts, and framework for ideation. 

It has become a mythic arch well established and easily adapted to the particularities of whatever crisis currently dominates the anxieties of our modern time.  The current Collapsitarian Narrative is just the latest in a long line of these manifestations.

*Previously these competing visions of the future had existed as part of a single narrative.  As can be seen in Menzies 1939 adaptation of H.G.Wells "Things to Come" the collapse narrative is quite evident, but exists within the storyline as a precursor period only; a dark age that must inevitably be passed through before the eventual rise of humanity into the promised Utopian future.

DANGER, Will Robinson! COSMIC ENERGY AHEAD!!!

A few days before Halloween, 1965, Irwin Allen brought to the TV screens of America a strangely wondrous allegorical tale -- the story of an 11 year-old girl's journey of sexual self-discovery, loss of innocence, struggle against Jungian archetypes, pedophilic rape, and the punative destructive forces unleashed when childhood sexual energy is misappropriated for the pleasure of greedy adults.

The series was Lost in Space, the epoisode, My Friend, Mr. Nobody, only the seventh to air in the then new television series.

When pre-teen space castaway Penny Robinson's attempts at garnering her father's attention go awry, incurring instead only his displeasure, she wanders off despondently, but soon comes across a secret, hidden, seemingly magical valley.  Here everything seems more alive--is more alive!  Here the very waters spout up playfully from their depths to tease her as-yet-un-kissed lips as she kneels to great them.

Exploring further, following the sound of her own voice as it echoes back and forth within an undiscovered crevasse, Penny's fingertips absentmindedly brush across a boulder just inside those rocky folds.  The stone moves, springing to life upon her gentle touch, and reveals the entrance to a strange cavern, dark and moist.  Attracted by by an overwhelming compulsion she is soon overcome, drawn into the gaping passage by unknown forces that seem to be beyond her control.  She is at once frightened, astonished, scared, fearful, excited, ashamed and amazed.

Penny returns to camp hours later with a new spring in her step, a knowing smile and...
a secret!
 
Penny tells her mother of her new "secret friend" whose deep dark cave only she "with just a single finger" has special access to, a "wonderful marvelous place" that no one else can understand.

Penny Bop.  She-bop a-way bop.

The first time she was frightened.  She ran away.

But the next day finds her once again at the mouth of the chasm, touching the magic gatekeeper stone, seeking entry to the deep dark mysterious cave and the wonders of its secret friend.

It will quickly become obvious to even the most inattentive viewer at this point that Penny's "secret friend" is the personified embodiment of what Wilhem Reich would have labeled her newly awakened "orgone energies". And the more she explores these secret, most personal of realms, the more powerful and responsive the growing, self-generated energy becomes.

Seen from this aspect the tale as it progresses from here takes on a sinister tone.  Dr. Zachary Smith -- a well known pederast -- soon turns his lustful eyes to the treasures hidden in her secret caverns.  Although she refuses his advances, wishing the share her secret place with none but herself, Smith undeterred quickly turns to stealth and subterfuge in an attempt to locate the entry to her most secret of places.  His access is once again denied -- until he finds the back door to her hidden cavern. 

Mr. Smith Goes to Town

Too tight to allow him the entry he desires (at one point his head, none to subtly, becoming stuck in this darker secondary cleft) and driven mad by desire for the jewels of her secret cave, Smith hatches a convoluted scheme which quite literally blows the young girl's dank hidden back passage wide open!

In a frightening scene enhanced with a tremendous score by the then "Johnny" Williams (yes, that Johnny Williams) the full fury of her overwhelming pubescent orgone energies, now suddenly unleashed, become an unstoppable force raining a storm of destruction down from the heavens, threatening to destroy the whole family unit.  

Such transparent references to preteen masturbation and pederasty as seen here may seem shocking for 1965 -- especially when viewed from our 21st century perspective.  But this is only because we underestimate the mind's ability to deny recognizing what it does not wish to see and the power that a thin veil of analogy can have in hiding obvious truths from those unwilling to see them.

Watch My Friend, Mr. Nobody in its entirety HERE.

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Deriving the Consent of the People

As political junkie and one time messiah, this is interesting not only for its message, but for its surefooted use of the medium's natural strengths; in creating a shared national narrative, a common experience and thereby establishing the foundation for governance by an engaged and involved populace.

It is easily worth 28 minutes of anyone's time, for the future historical significance alone*.

* In one of the endless number of possible alternate realities that populate our multiverse, there must exist a George W. Bush who applied this same skill and these consummate communication tactics to enacting Social Security reform immediately after the 2004 election. In this bizzarro-world there is no economic downturn and McCain is winning the election on the theme of:"McCain = 4 More Years of Bush!"

"Doddering" is Too Generious an Adjective

Hi! I want to run your... er, eh... well I want to run the...ah...thingy, you know.
Oh, yeah... the country!
Want to run the country... that's it!

GRRR...FIRE BAD!!! (pt. 2)

As noted earlier, Frankinstein's McMonster is on the rampage, destroying GOP hopes and dreams with an obviousness that cannot escape even the most stubborn or blindered of the Republicain faithfull:

Offered Without Comment:

An Examination of Obama’s Use of Hidden Hypnosis Techniques in His Speeches

"The effects of his hypnosis must be cancelled out by people starting to take a rational look at who he is, including the media. It is certainly a concern that this type of hypnosis is so effective that even after learning what Obama is doing, many may still not believe and accept that Obama is hypnotizing them and that they might not otherwise vote for him. It is my hope that the effects of all of Obama’s hypnotic and subconscious tactics are wiped away and neutralized completely...that everyone now be allowed to think and make logical and rational decisions."

http://www.pennypresslv.com

"GRRR... FIRE BAD!!!"

6 1/2 minutes in the mask begins to slip...

...continued here

McCain's Collapse: An Alternative Narrative

For the last couple weeks, starting shortly after the Republican convention, something has seemed out of place to me about the McCain campaign, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. No, not the obvious things, not the fear mongering and mud-slinging, nor the erratic changes in policy and off-kilter economic proposals; all those are of a part, but not incongruous in and of themselves.

What’s been bugging me is something more elemental. Something subtle and systemic that seems out of place for a seasoned campaigner like a John McCain. Odd little things, things that shouldn’t happen the way they do. Things like McCain’s “I approved this message” tag coming at the end of the attack ad rather than the beginning. (The hard and fast rule: end a positive message with you candidate’s voice & image, end a negative message with your opponent’s scary visage.)

Other techniques don’t add up either. McCain parroting Obama’s text in his own speeches, for example, which can only remind the viewer that someone else has said the same thing first – and quite possibly – better. These are things McCain should know better than to do. So why’s he doing them, I wondered?

Then it hit me, and it was obvious it nearly knocked me off my chair: He isn’t trying to win!

I know, it sounds completely improbable, but let me offer and alternative narrative for the McCain's last few weeks, a different framing through which to view tonight's debate.

It's the run up to the Republican convention and time to pick a running mate. The man John McCain really wants is a moderate and pro-life. The GOP base has already nixed that idea, however. He's backed into a corner, having already sold most of his soul to get to this point and now saddled with yet another repellent compromise, his POW experience kicks in. He'll do what he has to to live another day, he'll bite the bullet and do what his handlers suggest. But he sure as hell won't like it.

And so, deep in his heart of hearts, he hatches a plan. He'll do it their way, he'll pick the running mate they want, run the campaign they say he must, but if it all goes tits-up -- and he's got a very real and constantly gnawing gut feeling that it's going to -- and his career and reputation look like they're going crash upon the rocks, he sure as hell isn't going down alone.

If he has to take on the mantle of all that is wrong with the GOP in order to be "their man", a technique he knows will fail nevertheless, he's gonna make damn sure said mantle is so discredited that no good man will have it foisted upon them ever again. Ever.

McCain's appearances have the feel of performance art because that's exactly what they are. He's playing the caricature of a GOP candidate. He's embodying everything he knows & hates about his own party, the people that wouldn't accept him as he was, and he's spitting it back at them with a smirk and a nod, knowing full well it'll be their collective downfall.

In order to get on the ticket he's made himself into their Frankenstein monster, and if that's the case, now he's got no choice but to rampage and destroy -- at least until the gentle townsfolk rise up and burn him, his creators, and their precious, monolithic "castle on a hill" down to the very ground from which it once swelled.

Watch closely tonight and, when the mask slips, you'll see it in his eyes.