Category Archives: archetypes

On The Mole People (1956)

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Filmed and released in 1956 as a B movie, The Mole People, is one of the Saturday night camp films starring John Agar that is both good and bad at the same time. Production standards were card board cutouts and paper mâché boulders. As a movie goer you were required to suspend all of your disbelief regarding a plot line with more holes in it than a Swiss cheese. Even as a twelve year-old I thought this movie was awful, but perhaps even in its extreme awfulness one needs to contemplate the enslavement of the mole people. The plot is irrelevant, but the story is an old one, one group enslaves another, using force and violence to get another group to do all of their dirty work. The “mole” people are grotesque monsters, brutes and savages, and they are enslaved by more normal-looking humanoids, light-sensitive Sumerians as it turns out. The film is drenched is various levels of gratuitous violence and inexplicable adventures. The improbability of the storyline is only matched by the horrendous special effects, which turn out to be a flashlight. As a kid, we called this genre of film a “monster” movie in our own naive and simplistic way. Monsters were everywhere back in the 50’s and 60’s when this movie was made–middle of the Cold War, actually. We couldn’t defeat our monsters in real life, so we created troubling rubber-masked non-human monsters to populate the twilight zone of our subconscious. The weird light-fearing albinos and their slaves are thwarted, and the modern world of science and reason are re-established before the crowd walks back out into the real world of mutually ensured self-destruction of the nuclear age–slavery of another kind.

On the bildungsroman

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A German term for the “coming of age” novel, the bildungsroman as a genre is as old as time, as timeless as humanity itself. Customs, traditions, a rite of passage, almost all cultures celebrate the liminal state of the “tweener” in their journey to adulthood. Novelists have pursued the topic of with a certain energy, if not enthusiasm. I would venture to say that most novelists are trying to understand their own coming of age by writing that experience into a work of art that may or may not mirror their own. Perhaps they a looking for redemption, perhaps they are looking for sacrifice, but regardless of their intent, they have left a broad trail of broken dreams, failed intentions, and busted lives. Coming of age is that moment experience supplants innocence, and the grown child looks out at the world with new eyes. The transition may be rocky, painful, full of disillusion, regret, a place where dreams go to die. We find out that we are mortal, imperfect, and finite, but what is worse, we find out who we really might be. The problem is that all young children will eventually turn into adults whether they want to or not. During that transition, youngsters are asked to make a series of decisions about their future, for good or bad. In theory, the bildungsroman is about those experiences and those changes that shape a young person, resulting in a new being. Do you have a favorite “coming-of-age” novel? I’d like to hear about it.

On the bildungsroman

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A German term for the “coming of age” novel, the bildungsroman as a genre is as old as time, as timeless as humanity itself. Customs, traditions, a rite of passage, almost all cultures celebrate the liminal state of the “tweener” in their journey to adulthood. Novelists have pursued the topic of with a certain energy, if not enthusiasm. I would venture to say that most novelists are trying to understand their own coming of age by writing that experience into a work of art that may or may not mirror their own. Perhaps they a looking for redemption, perhaps they are looking for sacrifice, but regardless of their intent, they have left a broad trail of broken dreams, failed intentions, and busted lives. Coming of age is that moment experience supplants innocence, and the grown child looks out at the world with new eyes. The transition may be rocky, painful, full of disillusion, regret, a place where dreams go to die. We find out that we are mortal, imperfect, and finite, but what is worse, we find out who we really might be. The problem is that all young children will eventually turn into adults whether they want to or not. During that transition, youngsters are asked to make a series of decisions about their future, for good or bad. In theory, the bildungsroman is about those experiences and those changes that shape a young person, resulting in a new being. Do you have a favorite “coming-of-age” novel? I’d like to hear about it.

On American Pie

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You can go read the critical explanations of what Don McLean’s song, “American Pie,” is all about–Buddy Holly, Dylan, the Stones, the sixties, but I don’t think that most people think about those things today when they listen to the song. I imagine that most people think about lost loves, youth, music they loved, ideals, tragedy, religion, and a host of other associations which the broad metaphors and wide-open tropes of the song suggest. The beauty of the song does not lie in the exact meaning of each reference–the jester=Dylan–but in the voice that wants to tell a story about lost innocence and cynical experience. As adults we listen to this song, and some piece of it resonates with the things that have happened to us: a first girl friend, music, a pick-up truck, a glass of whiskey. What matters is that we listen to that voice which tells us that “for ten years, we’ve been on our own,” and we know that we are no longer young, no longer under the protection of our parents, no longer in the possession of our youthful ideals. We feel empty, rage, read too much bad news from our doorstep, seen too many widows on the nightly news. “American Pie” is about what is lost with age. This is the common experience which is shared with everyone who listens to the song. Each person fills in the blanks with the failures and losses in their own life. What makes the song special, however, what makes it stand apart from the pop music fluff of the seventies, is the song’s ability to evoke that period in everyone’s life when everything was lived so intensely, when everything was a drama, when you could still “kick off your shoes and dance,” when you still might wear a pink carnation. There is no remedy for the loss of innocence, and experience has taught us that although those high ideals we might have harbored in our youth were hot and burning, that life is a little easier to live without those preoccupations. Yet the loss of innocence is also a bitter affair when you realize how foolishly you acted, how unrealistic you were about the way the world worked, and how bitter experience can really be–“My hands were clenched in fists of rage.”

On American Pie

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You can go read the critical explanations of what Don McLean’s song, “American Pie,” is all about–Buddy Holly, Dylan, the Stones, the sixties, but I don’t think that most people think about those things today when they listen to the song. I imagine that most people think about lost loves, youth, music they loved, ideals, tragedy, religion, and a host of other associations which the broad metaphors and wide-open tropes of the song suggest. The beauty of the song does not lie in the exact meaning of each reference–the jester=Dylan–but in the voice that wants to tell a story about lost innocence and cynical experience. As adults we listen to this song, and some piece of it resonates with the things that have happened to us: a first girl friend, music, a pick-up truck, a glass of whiskey. What matters is that we listen to that voice which tells us that “for ten years, we’ve been on our own,” and we know that we are no longer young, no longer under the protection of our parents, no longer in the possession of our youthful ideals. We feel empty, rage, read too much bad news from our doorstep, seen too many widows on the nightly news. “American Pie” is about what is lost with age. This is the common experience which is shared with everyone who listens to the song. Each person fills in the blanks with the failures and losses in their own life. What makes the song special, however, what makes it stand apart from the pop music fluff of the seventies, is the song’s ability to evoke that period in everyone’s life when everything was lived so intensely, when everything was a drama, when you could still “kick off your shoes and dance,” when you still might wear a pink carnation. There is no remedy for the loss of innocence, and experience has taught us that although those high ideals we might have harbored in our youth were hot and burning, that life is a little easier to live without those preoccupations. Yet the loss of innocence is also a bitter affair when you realize how foolishly you acted, how unrealistic you were about the way the world worked, and how bitter experience can really be–“My hands were clenched in fists of rage.”

On The Cavanaugh Quest (Thomas Gifford)

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Over the years I have returned to this story of love and death, incest and suicide, murder, listening to the voice of a jaded and burned out Paul Cavanaugh as he tries to unravel a pretty seedy story of human shame and revenge. Cavanaugh doesn’t think anyone can sink as low as he is, on the verge of a mid-life crisis, but he soon finds out that looks can be deceiving, and that everyone is lying to him, except maybe his father. Of course, this novel is about facades, and nobody is really who they appear to be. Cavanaugh falls in love, but he’s a failed Lothario who’s affection go unrequited by one of the most interesting characters you will ever meet in a crime novel who-dun-it, Kim Roderick, who is straight out of an Poe short-story. Cavanaugh is an unlikely investigator, but not an unlikeable one, who isn’t afraid to share his shortcomings, whatever they might be. He’s a bit of a moral relativist, but even he is shocked by the crime that has been committed, especially in the end when all is revealed. Some of the book is a nostalgic, but cynical, look at Minneapolis, Minnesota in the early seventies set against the Ford pardon of Nixon. Minneapolis looks good, but it’s really rotten to the core, a moral metaphor for the ethics of the local rich and famous, upstanding citizens who are a little less than upstanding. The story evokes an end-of-summer atmosphere of sweltering heat, thunderstorms, and North Shore memories that will make any Minnesota yearn for just one more weekend up-north, at the cabin. Cavanaugh yearns to feel young again, but the decay and moral collapse around him only heightens his sense of lost youth and passing time. Though he does solve the puzzle, it’s not because he is Poirot, but because he just sticks with it until the end, as would most people. Readers will be able to relate to a “normal” guy who is not a “gifted” super-sleuth. Gifford hides the solution to the puzzle in plain sight—he’s the real genius in this novel. It unfolds slowly and methodically, and you won’t feel cheated or bamboozled at the end because the solution was more than obvious from about chapter two on. The prose flows fluidly, and although Gifford might be a bit verbose, he does it to pad the readers thoughts with lots of red-herring almost as well as Agatha Christie herself. If you are looking for something different, this might be your ticket. I highly recommend it.

On The Cavanaugh Quest (Thomas Gifford)

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Over the years I have returned to this story of love and death, incest and suicide, murder, listening to the voice of a jaded and burned out Paul Cavanaugh as he tries to unravel a pretty seedy story of human shame and revenge. Cavanaugh doesn’t think anyone can sink as low as he is, on the verge of a mid-life crisis, but he soon finds out that looks can be deceiving, and that everyone is lying to him, except maybe his father. Of course, this novel is about facades, and nobody is really who they appear to be. Cavanaugh falls in love, but he’s a failed Lothario who’s affection go unrequited by one of the most interesting characters you will ever meet in a crime novel who-dun-it, Kim Roderick, who is straight out of an Poe short-story. Cavanaugh is an unlikely investigator, but not an unlikeable one, who isn’t afraid to share his shortcomings, whatever they might be. He’s a bit of a moral relativist, but even he is shocked by the crime that has been committed, especially in the end when all is revealed. Some of the book is a nostalgic, but cynical, look at Minneapolis, Minnesota in the early seventies set against the Ford pardon of Nixon. Minneapolis looks good, but it’s really rotten to the core, a moral metaphor for the ethics of the local rich and famous, upstanding citizens who are a little less than upstanding. The story evokes an end-of-summer atmosphere of sweltering heat, thunderstorms, and North Shore memories that will make any Minnesota yearn for just one more weekend up-north, at the cabin. Cavanaugh yearns to feel young again, but the decay and moral collapse around him only heightens his sense of lost youth and passing time. Though he does solve the puzzle, it’s not because he is Poirot, but because he just sticks with it until the end, as would most people. Readers will be able to relate to a “normal” guy who is not a “gifted” super-sleuth. Gifford hides the solution to the puzzle in plain sight—he’s the real genius in this novel. It unfolds slowly and methodically, and you won’t feel cheated or bamboozled at the end because the solution was more than obvious from about chapter two on. The prose flows fluidly, and although Gifford might be a bit verbose, he does it to pad the readers thoughts with lots of red-herring almost as well as Agatha Christie herself. If you are looking for something different, this might be your ticket. I highly recommend it.

On the Cuyuni

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To say that I was skeptical of spending a day with a group of people–a tribe?–who lived at over 13,000 feet in the Andes near Cusco, Peru would be an understatement. The whole idea of ethno-tourism rocks my world in a strange way. Harkening back to the anthropologists of the late 19th and early 20th century who struck out for parts unknown hoping to find some isolated group of humans who were still living in a stone-age culture, we set out from our hotel in Urubamba to visit a group of people, isolated in a small Andean village outside of Cusco, to find out what their daily routine was like. No matter how you look at this, it just feels odd. We drove out of Urubamba and up into the mountains, meeting a small welcome committee on a high, isolated plain in the middle of the Andes, above the tree line at 13,870 feet. The air is thin and cool, the stubby pines that have been planted in this rarefied atmosphere are just that, stubby. The welcoming committee was gracious, and we all hiked up to a grassy knoll where the village priest or pacco or misayoq or shaman was preparing a blessing or prayer to the Pachamama or earth-mountain spirit. The ritual was very moving and very colorful. I was struck by the theatricality of the experience, the colorful costumes worn by the local people, their willingness to interact with us, the outsiders. They then proceeded to show us how they cut the local peat moss for fuel and invited some of us to use one of their locally made spades that they use for digging, tilling and planting their crops. For lunch we made our way to their village, and a brief, but expected, rainstorm, soaked everything, including us, as we gathered for lunch in the center of their community at the local one-room school. The Peruvian government has invested a certain amount of time and money into modernizing the village and its cooking, and we were offered a well-prepared and tasty lunch served up to restaurant standards of presentation and hygiene, and it was very good. After lunch we had a weaving demonstration, and we met a llama or two, and our day ended with traditional music and dancing. I am still at odds as to what I think about all of these “demonstrations” of local traditions and practices. I know that our presence brings much needed income into the area, but I am also sure that our presence is a kind of cultural contamination that will change everything for these people. On the other hand, better roads and technology have improved the lives of these isolated people, and some things, such as their health, has gotten better. Crops and harvests have improved as well as education and parallel social issues. Yet, there is a nagging question that remains: is “ethno-tourism” morally wrong or ethically acceptable? I don’t think the answer is black and white or simple in any particular way. I really enjoyed meeting these people, seeing where they lived, eating their food, checking out the livestock–llamas are not common in central Texas. In a way, they were working by interacting with us, which, of course, brings prosperity to an otherwise economically depressed area, and although the mountains are breathtaking where they live, no one can eat the scenery and life at 13,000 feet is very tough. Tourism works for these people. Perhaps change is not always as horrible as it seems, and I’m not going to idealize their authentic lives or existence all out of proportion. The problem I have with all of this is not a simple one, but it does have to do with radically different cultures clashing and what the different participants of that clash take away from the experience. There are questions of poverty, technology, language, religion, and politics which must go both unanswered and unexplored due to time and space. I would go back, though, because seeing a totally different culture practice its traditions, whatever they might be. re-ignites a person’s fires of self-awareness. You see, the contemplated life is a life worth living even if questions and doubts linger.

On the Cuyuni

Posted on by

To say that I was skeptical of spending a day with a group of people–a tribe?–who lived at over 13,000 feet in the Andes near Cusco, Peru would be an understatement. The whole idea of ethno-tourism rocks my world in a strange way. Harkening back to the anthropologists of the late 19th and early 20th century who struck out for parts unknown hoping to find some isolated group of humans who were still living in a stone-age culture, we set out from our hotel in Urubamba to visit a group of people, isolated in a small Andean village outside of Cusco, to find out what their daily routine was like. No matter how you look at this, it just feels odd. We drove out of Urubamba and up into the mountains, meeting a small welcome committee on a high, isolated plain in the middle of the Andes, above the tree line at 13,870 feet. The air is thin and cool, the stubby pines that have been planted in this rarefied atmosphere are just that, stubby. The welcoming committee was gracious, and we all hiked up to a grassy knoll where the village priest or pacco or misayoq or shaman was preparing a blessing or prayer to the Pachamama or earth-mountain spirit. The ritual was very moving and very colorful. I was struck by the theatricality of the experience, the colorful costumes worn by the local people, their willingness to interact with us, the outsiders. They then proceeded to show us how they cut the local peat moss for fuel and invited some of us to use one of their locally made spades that they use for digging, tilling and planting their crops. For lunch we made our way to their village, and a brief, but expected, rainstorm, soaked everything, including us, as we gathered for lunch in the center of their community at the local one-room school. The Peruvian government has invested a certain amount of time and money into modernizing the village and its cooking, and we were offered a well-prepared and tasty lunch served up to restaurant standards of presentation and hygiene, and it was very good. After lunch we had a weaving demonstration, and we met a llama or two, and our day ended with traditional music and dancing. I am still at odds as to what I think about all of these “demonstrations” of local traditions and practices. I know that our presence brings much needed income into the area, but I am also sure that our presence is a kind of cultural contamination that will change everything for these people. On the other hand, better roads and technology have improved the lives of these isolated people, and some things, such as their health, has gotten better. Crops and harvests have improved as well as education and parallel social issues. Yet, there is a nagging question that remains: is “ethno-tourism” morally wrong or ethically acceptable? I don’t think the answer is black and white or simple in any particular way. I really enjoyed meeting these people, seeing where they lived, eating their food, checking out the livestock–llamas are not common in central Texas. In a way, they were working by interacting with us, which, of course, brings prosperity to an otherwise economically depressed area, and although the mountains are breathtaking where they live, no one can eat the scenery and life at 13,000 feet is very tough. Tourism works for these people. Perhaps change is not always as horrible as it seems, and I’m not going to idealize their authentic lives or existence all out of proportion. The problem I have with all of this is not a simple one, but it does have to do with radically different cultures clashing and what the different participants of that clash take away from the experience. There are questions of poverty, technology, language, religion, and politics which must go both unanswered and unexplored due to time and space. I would go back, though, because seeing a totally different culture practice its traditions, whatever they might be. re-ignites a person’s fires of self-awareness. You see, the contemplated life is a life worth living even if questions and doubts linger.