Daily Reprieve

The circle is complete.  I have watched the Crystal Skull.  It is done.  I was neither bolled over nor disappointed.  There was the Ark from the original movie peeking at me, giving me a little wink as we escaped Area 51.  The wild little alcohol swigging winch from the original is now the mother of Indy’s bastard greaser son, Mutt.  And as in the Raiders, the eyes are still the gateway to the soul.  The beginning meets the end, as in the great Ouroboros.

“Let this circle represent what we can do together and never apart.”  I have heard this phrase from my first treatment facility to the last recovery meeting I attended.  And this thought was expressed when the alien throne room was discovered.  The aliens represent what we hope to be in the future.  They are the ideal human beings, who have advanced from individualistic struggles to the power of the group conscience.  This is apart of our next great evolutionary jump.  The 13th skull represents so many things for me.  But in the movie, it represented aliens willing to remain in limbo until they were all together again.  They did not leave a brother alien behind. 

A second aspect of this ideal human species is the understanding that the greed for individual knowledge can be as destructive as the greed for gold.  When I seek to gain knowledge so that I can rule over my peers, I am seeking the knowledge that is power for self enthronement.  That means that my self exaltation requires an attitude of disregard for others.  My need to be right carries a parallel need to insure that you are wrong, if you are different.  The aliens take a hit in many on line reviews for offering treasure, luring humans to gain power, when the only noticeable result is the melting of your brain.  But I believe that because these aliens were “collectors” as Dr. Jones noticed, the connection between human Russian and alien was an exchange of knowledge.  And as the alien became aware of the pure selfishness, the disregard for the life of her own species, the desire to cause all others to think as she thought, to use the knowledge to eliminate all voices of free thought…and ultimately, the fact that the alien was arrogantly approached by one isolated individual rather than the more advanced group conscience…I imagine this alien was more than a little disturbed.  Mac’s greed for self-enthronement with gold and the FemDom bitch’s greed for self-enthronement through knowledge act as an invitation to compare the similarity.  The fact that the McCarthy era was played up in the environment of the movie, the need to control the way others think, what knowledge they have access to, and the James Dean greaser look of Mutt, a voice for freedom in a new generation, the issue of free access to knowledge and a respectful sharing of others intimate realities became the central virtue of this movie, for me. 

Just a supplemental note, it seemed many felt the nuclear scene was out of place, and a contrived intrusion to the plot of the story.  But if you look at the fact that Indy sought refuge in what he thought was an ideal American community, that its inhabitants were all mindless props, and that an immature society gaining great knowledge, resulted in the production of the most destructive weapon ever imagined, then it makes a great deal of sense to include this.  At least for me it does.

Which brings me to a third and final point from the movie.  The message of generational transfer.  Indy looks longingly at his father’s picture in the movie several times.  As Indy begins to take responsibility for his son, he refers to him as Junior, a name he resented his father using on him.  But a name that he treasured in the end.  At the wedding, as the son seeks to capture the memory of lineage confirming marriage, the wind opens the church doors and throws the famed hat at the boys feet.  Was this a visit from Indy’s father from the other side of the veil?  Mutt picks it up in a moment of awe, almost gets it on his own head, and Indy smiles and takes it from him, reclaims the hat…and his son.  The right of passage has begun.  The rebel without a cause begins to get a sense of himself. 

I would like to thank my son for his encouragement to go ahead and see this movie.

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This entry was posted on January 7, 2009 at 12:26 pm and is filed under Uncategorized with tags Addiction, Alcoholism, Journal, Life, Personal, Recovery, Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.