Jack the Giant Slayer -'Slaying Royalty' subtext.-rough edit.

While watching the 2013 film Jack the Giant Slayer i could not help but notice some oddities that , at least for me, made it more interesting and gave me a chance to exercise, and show the benefit of, critical thinking . The first thing i noticed, about what i assumed was just a standard action/romance film was that the lead giant resembled famous German actor Klaus Kinski.

There is no denying it, since i was familiar with Herzog films.
Specifically the giant is modeled on a character Kinski played in the Werner Herzog film 'Aguirre , the wrath of God'.

The film is about a ruthless Spanish conquistador called Aguirre and his obsessive quest for  El Eldorado or the mythical Aztec city of gold.In the film South American natives are murdered for blasphemy because they do not recognise or bow to the bible.The film has heavy themes of obsession, religious corruption and religious motivated violence and hypocrisy.

 TRAILER OF AGUIRRE WRATH OF GOD.


In Jack the Giant Slayer however, the giants fighting the king have strong Irish accents, (which has to be intentional)  the second in command giant also has a curious ethnic looking face, that could be black or Australian aboriginal.All these particular groups have suffered at the hands of an expansionist British Empire.

The toffs have bizarre uniforms with pretty obvious wings attached. Aristocracy and religion (remember the bowing which we will see later) all tried to link their own position to  supernatural abilities, the idea your position was due to divine power.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings  (Worth sticking with, and reading the whole article).

This is easier when most of your society cannot read of course.

From the back Ewan Mcgregor's toff knight gets wings too.

The King from the back with ermin trimmed angels wings.

Aside from the odd mix of historical costumes and inaccuracy we also have this odd Kaiser character who seems to be modeled after the last German Emperor Wilhelm 2nd.He was the grandson of Queen Victoria (European Royalty are all inter bred, before the first world war our Royal family was called 'The Sax Coburgs, it was changed to Windsor after the first world war for fear it would stir up anti royal feeling).

The film script has an obsession with crowns, with characters bowing to the crown, caring little for who wears it.  In the final scene, one of the giants drops a giant catapult as he bows, the children's toy divides the scene, effectively suggesting bowing to a crown is a childish act.

In fact the giants themselves lose their anger in seconds when faced with a crown, bowing and scraping, the King and the toff knight exchange a cheeky grin when the giants bow.

The end of the film Jack , now married, is telling a story to his children, the camera adopts a curious path. Closing in on this story book next to a Faberge egg.Originally made for the Russian royal family.Russian royalty ruled over a serf system (slavery).

We next see, while Jack reads a fairy tale to his children, a prolonged process of the making of the Crown Jewell's.  Jacks narration about fairy tales is linked to the making of this ostentatious looking crown.Then we cut to a group of children on a visit to Windsor castle.

A straggler writing in a notebook finds time to look at the crown and laugh knowingly, the implication being; a schoolboy gets 'the joke' why don't we?

The film ends with a big panoramic shot with the ancient castle nestled in a corner of the modern 2013 city of London.Panning up eventually to the giants city above it all.

The visual metaphors in the film are a bit clunking and the script is poor, but the subtext is pretty clear, the film is using the Jack and the Beanstalk story to show the ridiculous social phenomenon of royalty and crown worship.

This hidden subtext  made the film more interesting.


I might do a post on using critical thinking at some stage, since its benefits far outweigh the effort it takes.

Thanks for taking the time to read, if you have any comments or questions please leave some, i always reply. 

Straw Dogs:Rape depiction in films- work in progress.

Added the film Straw Dogs to my YT playlist and noticed one account holder had put an edit point in his comment, linked to the start of the infamous rape scene. It didn't shock me so much , that someone was advising others to masturbate to a violent rape, but it  was synchronous. The film, and a lot of Penkinpah's work opened up discussion on violence and censorship.

In Straw Dogs a young couple leave London for Cornwall, where the woman was brought up. Conflict with a group of local men end in a brutal rape and violence.

It was remade in 2011.
I have yet to see the remake and i saw the original years ago, so i shall re watch, and begin a discussion on this topic.


Below is a series of short interviews with the various actors from 'Straw Dogs', in which the sexual violence is discussed.

 

The Three Wishes test.-Critical thinking.

I was on a psychology forum  when i came across an interesting post, that gave me a chance to engage in critical thinking and analyse the hidden meanings behind the responses.

Someone posed the  question ''what would you do with three wishes?''. They sold it as a narrative, that you found a genie in a lamp (for genie we can think God, Fate). The narrative had rules: you had could not wish for extra wishes, or more genies, this was to pin people down to making interesting, diverse responses. If people type 'unlimited wishes' then there is no further need to elaborate. However, i found a commonality between the responses and so I filtered them down to three, which covered , broadly, most of the posters replies.

The three most common wishes were:

1.I want people to have sex with me.  -             Sexual attractiveness, potency, rape fantasy- power over  others, domination.

     2. I want no harm to come to my loved ones.-       The ability to detain fate (natural process), control.

     3.Immortality and power.                                      Narcissism, god complex, fantasy of success.

It becomes interesting to examine the hidden motive behind this fantasy of gaining power and to think about what this says both about the respondents to the question and to the psychology of human beings.

The first one was probably more of a younger persons wish, a lot of students use the site.
1.all women want to have sex with me.

There were a few responses from women, but they tended to focus on physical improvements,such as movie star looks or perfect body’s. as did a lot of the men (thought penis size in their case was one of the most common responses). This really meant they wanted to feel more attractive to people, and by intimation, less lonely.

 The next most common wish was family orientated, summed up best as:
2. i want no harm to come to my loved ones 

Some of the replies wanted to bestow wealth and health on their family, some wished for diseases to go away, for fathers and mothers to return. For rifts to be healed. Having family and friends gives us a sense of identity, a society within a society in which we have those valuable checks and balances that allow us to feel needed and wanted.
The third was divided in to two , one philanthropic, one narcissistic. They can equally be best summed up as:
3. World peace, no war or poverty.

This can be linked directly with the ‘no harm to loved ones’ in the number two wish. We could argue that the observer expectancy effect comes in to play here. The ones who post tailor their responses to put themselves in a good light in the hope of receiving peer approval. Which can then, be held in corollary with number one. ‘I want people to find me attractive’.
3.a immortality

Finally we come to the narcissism of being an immortal. All the responses under the umbrella term qualified their wish with good looks, and a perfect body. Some held rationale about how the prolonged life would give them time to build wealth, become a famous valuable asset to the planet.
We can now draw a line linking the three wishes, which i believe can be summed up  in this statement.
I wish for people to like and love me.

I noted apart from the odd Caligula like rant, most people wanted genuine affection from others should they attain this plateaued   position of fame, good lucks and pro longed life.
Thanks for reading, if you have comments you can do so anonymously if you wish

Different coloured puppet. Negonym a negated hononym.

There was a childrens television show called 'Sooty and Sweep', a puppet show now long gone. But i was interested in the  puppet named 'Sooty'. Sooty being an old fashioned bigoted term for someone of black descent .
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7826701.stm - article on the 'Prince Of Wales' calling a polo chum a sooty.
I read in the papers that some people campaigned to change the name of the puppet, since Sooty has negative connotations. Sooty and Sooty now become a hononym. That is, a word that has different meanings but pronounced  and written the same.
Something that interested me, as an artist i was interested in how a word created as a name for a puppet bear in the 1950's can now be looked upon as racist in 2000 +.
And the censorship of words that gradually are being removed from our lexicons.
Another racial orientated hononym might be spade and spayed. In England we 'call a spade a spade', but this has fallen out of use now due to its racial connotations.

I am researching if there is an actual word for a racially orientated hononym and if not, might i created one and claim it. If not i intend to propose 'Negonym' that is 'a negated hononym'.
In any case this painting is a working through of these general ideas,

Thanks for the high views on this artwork. This post is in edit and i will add a more detailed explanation as well as new work on this theme.

Thank you for reading , if you have comments please leave them i always reply.