ANST - interesting themes ... 13th Warrior

[j'lynn yeates]

the flick did bring up some interesting themes ... especially for those of us 
who cut our teeth on Joseph Campbell's work and have a love for early histories 
and transition cultures  ... here's a few off the top of my head:

"tale style" ...
if one takes it as a "historicical piece" (which it was not meant to be) it 
will fail ... but if one takes it as a "period-like tale" it works.  in teh 
right form, would make a excellent saga ... take a measure of historical fact 
as a starting point, throw in standard heroic structure, mix with some basic 
myth and plausible situation (see later comments) and you have a classic 
"warriors tale" ... 

"the great forest" ....
in this century, we still run into isolated remnants of neolithic cultures on 
the edges of "civilizations".  it's a plausibale scenario that a early, 
expanding metal culture could have (note is did not say *did*) run into 
surviving neolithic cultures.  once the technology level of that metal culture 
improved to a point and population pressures drove them to it, so they could 
breech the barriers presented by the forest .... few alive today can conceive 
what this "forest" probably represented to the psyche of the times, especally 
since it's almost completly gone now.   

as they started making inroads into the great forests of europe ... where such 
a neolithic culture would have retreated from the more accessable lands, 
cultural conflicts as portrayed in this movie would be inevitable.  such 
conflict is recorded as happening in ireland and in the british isles,  it's 
plausable that such a conflict might have happened in europe.  

"cannibalism and headhunting"  ...
teh dirty little secret of the "enlightened" caucasions ... headhunting was a 
fact in our early cultures and among the horse-barbarians who invaded from the 
east ... extending to japan.  there is much evidence that cannibalism was a not 
uncommon facet in neolithic hunter-gatherer societies world wide.  it was one 
the attributed evils of the tatar's and later mongols (racial memory 
resurrected as a propaganda tool ???).  if memory serves, it was also something 
laid on the medieval jews by the christian majorities ...

"bear totem"
this is the really juicy connection that has tons-o-links into the sanitised 
literature.  one of the most common "totems" found in northern neolithic sites 
was that of the bear, as noted by the numerous bear-skull finds atrributed to 
ritual use.  why?  the bear, especially the cave bear, was the most feared and 
savage preditor our remote ancestors had to deal with ... not to mention it's 
"magical" connection of "yearly rebirth/death" ... into the earth / from the 
earth .  

take on it's skin and you become the thing, making the connections to these 
animalistic powers of nature.  anyone note that these "monsters" do have a 
recorded place in history ... considser the parallel of the "bear-sarks" or as 
they are more commonly known, the "berserkers" ... the warriors who went mad 
with blood-lust and charged into batttle, usually naked but wearing the skin of 
the bears ....        

"descent to the underworld"
classic hero's journey stuff, done time and time again ... in this case it's to 
find the "mother", the icon that represents the neolithic earth-clann by the 
patriarchal iron-wielding "father" (the warrior leader).  here we see a ancient 
psycho drama played out.  pay particular note of the snake imagry as another 
ancient symbol of eternity (birth/death/rebirth).  

someone was adamant that this story was not "beowulf" and the grendals ... 
actually, in a wider sense i think it was - all the details are present ... the 
"grendal" (in this case a tribe of "grendals" defending their ancestral lands  
/ final refuge from the invading strangers who keep pushing them deeper and 
deeper into the forests  ... grendals "mother", as priestess to the earth-
powers ... the hero and his development, journey, and final triumph.  i wonder 
how many times this story was actually played out as the newer cultures 
displaced and triumphed over the older ones ....

'wolf
... but then, it could just be about morlocks after all (g)

... truth is the sword of us all (lords of the new church)
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