Prometheus, sacrificial heroes, and mining for flint in the new “Snark Age."

In the "Homerpalooza" episode of The Simpsons animated television show, a crowd of pimpled, “disaffected” teens are told over the loudspeaker that Homer will be shot in the stomach by a cannonball for their amusement. One teen reacts to the news by saying in a deliberately vague manner, “That’s cool.” To which his friend replies, “Are you being sarcastic, Dude?” The first teen considers it for a brief moment before dropping his shoulders in defeat,  “I don’t even know anymore.”

So funny.

And, as was often the case for The Simpsons in its prime, so painfully true.

When two 747’s loaded with human beings and jet fuel were shot into the Twin Towers for the amusement of some and the horror of the rest of us, the worldwide television event inspired one armchair philosopher to spout, “We’re now in a post-ironic world."

How ironic can you get?

One need only take a tour of the local hipster hangouts- they’re ubiquitous these days- to realize you might just as easily drown in the flotsam of ironic facial hair and ephemeral posturing.

When someone touts the end of something, rest assured that, more often than not, it hasn’t even begun to crest. Think of G.W. Bush's infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner or historian Francis Fukuyama’s notoriously presumptive essay declaring the “End of History." Metaphorically, one understands Mr. Fukuyama’s conclusion based on the early 1990’s context into which he was speaking, but events like 9/11 assure us that history has a way of scrambling out of Pandora's Box, no matter how much we’d like to contain and contextualize it. 

I bring all this up to highlight the extreme 'bummer factor' I’m feeling when I read a commentary like Scott Jordan Harris’ when he accurately points out that in the world of film criticism we have reached, what he terms, the “Snark Ages." And its end is far from nigh.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/scottharris/100064232/lets-drag-film-criticism-out-of-the-snark-ages-2/

Our snark doesn’t exist in a vacuum nor has it emerged inexplicably from nowhere. I would argue that it is symptomatic of the recent fall from grace of so many in whom we’ve placed and/or misplaced our admiration. The fall of the Twin Towers got the whole world united under a common feeling. That squandered opportunity and subsequent decade of war and financial f@#k ups, has left an entire generation with a bad taste in its mouth. And it's not just the "big ticket" items like war and global finance.

Ponder briefly if you will the recent Icarus like fall of three of the world’s most popular and powerful personalities: President Barak Obama, golfing icon Tiger Woods, and basketball lightning rod LeBron James. Now granted, all three are still millionaires— two of them many, many times over — and all three remain very powerful in their respective fields. But remind yourself how, within the brief space of two years, all three had fallen from near spotless public adoration, to near universal disappointment, and in certain cases, outright revulsion and contempt.

The fact that all three are African American is, for the purposes of this argument, beside the point. I'm certainly willing to ponder the social relevance of that some other time. I merely chose them because of how highly they were elevated in the public eye, and how quickly they fell from popular opinion. Just think of the euphoric “rock star” status candidate Obama experienced, compared to just two years later in the White House.

When our political leaders and public icons turn out to be simply human, even petty and base in their actions and attitudes, the contempt we feel is actually a misdirected hatred towards something in ourselves: that part that truly wanted to believe and hope. We become resentful for being “duped” and vow “never again!” We develop thick skins, and mean, caustic attitudes as a knee jerk defense against anything seeking to win our admiration. This I think, along with the other events I mentioned previously, is in large part, the genesis behind the new "Snark Age." As the old saying goes, it’s easier to tear something down than it is to build. 

Which brings us back to Harris’ article.

The point Harris makes is that being snarky in a critique has somehow become the litmus test of how cutting edge and contemporary a film critic can be. Wit has been supplanted by the whip, and insightful, selfless commentary intended for the betterment of the art form itself is replaced by the self-serving lash of “flesh-tearing” sarcasm — the word’s literal meaning.

I couldn’t help but think immediately of the fallout surrounding the premiere of Ridley Scott’s impossibly overhyped Prometheus. The inability for it to meet expectations was almost foreordained by the fanboy frenzy swirling around it. As Oliver Stone’s Jim Morrison so accurately interprets the true meaning of the chanting crowd, “They don’t want me; they want my death.”

They say never meet your heroes because you’ll find they never live up to the vision you have in your head. So often, it’s the very over exposure we demand of our pop idols that leads to their destruction. We want everything from them. We want complete access. But the closer we get, the more revulsion we experience. Like Dr. Frankenstein, whose idol of worship was the creation of life itself. When he beheld the Creature first hand, he ran in revulsion from what he’d made. And he could finally never rest, until he knew the life he had created was dead. Talk about ironic…

If a writer and a director were savvy enough to realize that in this hyper-mediated electronic age in which we live, where no truly challenging artifact can possibly withstand the deluge of inflated fanboy expectation and ultimate derision, and electronically chanting hordes seek sacrificial fulfillment at the death of their manmade gods, that writer and director might be able, if they were willing, to create a work of art that postulates so many unanswered questions as to elevate it beyond the simple confines of its initial lifeform into a virtual realm of viral Valhalla. By doing so, they might, in fact, be able to create a transmediated artifact whose evolutionary existence in the blogosphere would defy the initial slings and arrows of “Snark Age” detractors, bursting through the chests of snide remarking jesters, to live on in endless, irresolvable, indeterminate interweb disputation. ...Or something like that. LOL.

I believe Lindelof and Scott may have conspired to create such an artifact.

And why the hell not?

Most critics in the echo chamber of the interweb are currently bandying about the thinly-veiled poo-pooing phrase, "Well... Prometheus' plot leaves us to do the heavy lifting" as if to say no "truly great" film could ever possibly demand such a thing as "heavy lifting" from its audience. Since when?

When's the last time any of them saw a Tarkovsky film? I mean... really?

Let’s look for clues in the film Prometheus itself.

The Engineers seed the earth, tend the garden, and point the way. But it is humanity that’s left to do the heavy work, to build the vessels, and sail the oceans of space.

Look at the Xenomorph. It needs a host to implant its embryo. The host gives its life for new life. The ultimate weight to be lifted: the gift of life itself.

The scene where the characters enter into the inner sanctum of urns in Prometheus is essentially a metaphor for the entire film in my opinion.  As our eyes are lead upward toward the soaring heights of the vaulted ceiling, we see the mural of the "Life-giver," his abdomen prominent and exposed. But soon we are led back down to the slime of the ground, the stolen urn, the dissolution of the "black goo." And the monsters it spawns.

This is basically a template for what happens in the three act structure of the film: A soaring beginning degenerating into trite dialogue, inexplicable motivations, hackneyed suspense tropes and a formulaic “Hollywood action movie" ending. This degeneration is exactly what its detractors are decrying, but I say they are missing the point entirely.

Whether consciously or subconsciously, the intended result of the writer and filmmaker was to show degeneration from purity to corruption. Defects like poor dialogue and hackneyed tropes were inevitable when the subconscious was working so hard under the weight of their overarching themes.

So... was it intentional? A purposeful, degeneration from Platonic, purely conceptual, intellectual Science Fiction, to the trash bin of “Hollywood” action movie formula? I'm sure Lindelof and Scott never intended for part of their film to actually stink. But I do believe that the subconscious can't help but shine through in any creative work. And regardless if it was a conscious decision or a subconscious by-product of a working theme, either way, what we're left with is a commentary on the nature of the act of creating an artifact in a mass consumer culture. Particularly one dictated and mediated by the demands of an iconic franchise, financiers, distributors, and marketing executives. All of it, is resonant with the plot and themes of Prometheus itself. 

And finally, Prometheus can be read as a greater commentary on how we, as both creators and consumers, interact with ourselves, our world, and each other.

Big things, indeed have small beginnings.

Some commentaries have accurately described the central conflict informing Prometheus to be the purity of self-sacrificial actions for the sake of creation vs. the contamination brought about by arrogant motives towards self-preservation.

Think of ourselves, the consumers of this film, this artwork. 

We, like the characters in the film, enter the inner sanctum, which is for us the theatre. The seats in the theatre looking very much like the urns arrayed around the central figure of the massive head.

And we, like the characters in the film, affect the atmosphere… with what? Our breath? Our body temperature? Our smell? Or is it something much more metaphysical? The very nature of who we are? Our expectation? Our demand? Our purity vs. our contamination?

What makes the “black goo” do that voodoo that it do?

We don’t know. And we are not told.

But the clues are all there. For us to debate, if we’re willing to sacrifice our selfish need to be spoonfed all the answers. Scott and Lindelof are not asking us to be Gerber babies.

Obviously, I've made many leaps and connected many dots and presupposed many things about the intentions of Lindelof and Scott. But I'm willing to do so. I'm willing to build a ship and follow a map on a dark cave wall. I'm willing to do the heavy lifting.

And this is where the line in the sand is drawn for a film like Prometheus. You see which side I'm on.

Sometimes artists and others in our lives ask us to dig deeper. To mine what is beneath the surface. Are we willing to sacrifice? To find flint? To strike it on rock? To make fire in the black, gooey gloom?

Are we even willing to create our own meaning and be satisfied? To share what we have found, to initiate an ongoing discourse, and to be content in the knowledge that it may only be ourselves who see it that way? 

Or are we too content to snark our way through the darkness? To whistle past the graveyard? To write off what we are unwilling to work at in order to understand, or are too afraid to share?

And not just in the movie theater. 

Are we being endlessly sarcastic? Do we even know anymore?

Are we willing to forgive where we find flaws in our artists, and heroes? Are we willing to meet them halfway? Or do we just pile on the hate when our expectations aren't met?

Would we rather light a flame or curse the darkness? Are we willing to dig for Promethean flint? 

The Nostromo was a mining vessel after all…