domingo, dezembro 20, 2009

The Fate of Religion in the world after the attacks of September 11, 2001

The Book of Eli (Book of Eli, 2010) reflects in each scene the imagery after the attacks of 11/09/2001 where religion and the clash of civilizations are responsible for global conflicts. Therefore, it remains to be neutralized religion at its heart libertarian (Mysticism and Sacred) and become a model of asceticism and discipline martial for "new priests." Warning: this post contains spoilers!

If the films in the '80s-themed post-apocalyptic Mad Max reflect the steroids narcissism of conservatism of the Reagan era, films like the end of that decade continued to reflect the imagery after the attacks of September 11 and all the justifying ideology of international politics anti-terror U.S.. As we know, the alibi in anti-American terrorism is based on the existence of a "clash of civilizations" between East and West, between Islamic fundamentalism or other theocratic cultures and societies and the liberal democratic West. The issue went beyond the political, but through the cultural and religious: our God is more tolerant and liberal than the other. Countries wage wars and attacks in the name of a god, as we build democratic political institutions that reflect a religious system of a god tolerant, practicing compassion and love.

The film Book of Eli explicitly conservative ideology that sits in the era of supposedly liberal Obama administration (which means, in relation to the Bush era, nothing should change in international relations the U.S.).

The protagonist Eli (Denzel Washington) cross, alone, the U.S. apparently devastated by a nuclear catastrophe (the personagans talk about "Big Glare," "the sky opened up and the sun fell on the earth", etc.).. Anyway, the origin of everything would have been a war of global proportions with religious motivations. Therefore, after the war, all copies of the Bible (and other religious books) were rounded up and burned, leaving an issue that is transported by Eli, inside your backpack.

This single copy is eagerly sought by Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a mixture of gangster and mayor who sees the Bible as a set of words with magical power persuasive enough to enlist the city in its favor, getting even more power to influence and control .
Eli (a clear allusion to the prophet Elijah in the Old Testament described as the champion of monotheism and model for asceticism and seclusion in the pursuit of touch with God through prayer) is lonely, driven by blind faith (a voice you would have revealed you should take your single edition of the bible somewhere to the west), monosyllabic and endowed with courage and skills of a martial artist.

So far the movie combines three effects of religion: first, it produced an apocalyptic world war because (the film suggests) fundamentalism and intolerance, and second, the religious discourse is presented as a potential propaganda tool that produces persuasion and, consequently, a kind of "social cement" that motivates people to a common goal, and third, the religion as a drive that produces moral and ethical values like asceticism, self-discipline and motivation from a blind faith that leads to sublimation of desires and individual needs in the name of a higher purpose.

Here the allusion to the prophet Elijah is deliberate. The monastic movement of the century IV took Elijah as his model, a strong emphasis on continence, poverty, life in the wilderness, fasting, his prayer. Eli, the protagonist in the film, goes against a strain of silent protagonists, idealistic and ascetics, from Clint Eastwood at Mad Max.

"New Fathers"

The film's screenwriter, Gary Whitt, originates in the game universe as a journalist and writer of games like "Pray", "War" and so on. It is interesting to note the influence on the script of the Book of Eli not only the language of the universe of games, but even what we may call a new asceticism of a new class that deals with new technologies. The Canadian researcher Arthur Kroker talked about the emergence of "new priests", members of the new virtual class that have a self-image as a mystic and messianic harbingers of a promised land: the digital paradise. Mission that requires renunciation and asceticism: isolation, renunciation of worldly pleasures and physiological needs (sleep and sex), but different from fasting, a diet junk on coffee, cigarettes and slices of pizza in endless sessions in front of computer screens .

The pastiche that Eli is the protagonist (a mixture of characteristic "of the heroes of Western heroes in movies like Kung Fu with David Carradine of the 70 - and pacifist fighter) is a projection of that self-image of the" new fathers "of the digital age.

Return to Order

This neoconservative ideology on religion will be realized in his own narrative structure, and conventional hoolywoodiana: breakdown of order and return to order. The film starts showing sequences of lawlessness, chaos and disorder (gangs of cannibals, attempted rape, robbery, looting), all caused by religion who played in the post-apocalypse world. Eli should carry the book that produced the apocalypse (the Bible) to a safe place in the West. It should keep you away from people who just like Carnegie would repeat the awful addicted past.

At the end we have to restore order, although Carnegie can steal the Bible of Eli having been devoted to reading the Bible for years, managed to memorize it word for word. Arriving in San Francisco in ruins and you go to Alcatraz Island is received by members of an initiative that seeks to unite all the artistic legacy of humanity in a kind of museum. Eli begins to dictate the entire contents of the Bible is that manuscript to be subsequently printed a new edition.

The new version of the Bible is then placed on a shelf, comfortably alongside Thora, Quoran, Bhagavad Vita etc. It is the restoration of order. The ending is both ironic and symbolic: the museum where all cultural and artistic heritage of humanity is gathered is at Alcatraz Island, the legendary prison off (ironically many blogs say the movie should be called "Escape to Alcatraz").

This is the fate of conservative religion and the Sacred: as a book resting on a shelf in front of the disinterested gaze which borders the sacred or the mere aesthetic dilettantism. Herbert Marcuse once called this "repressive tolerance": under the guise of a liberal system that allows all ideologies and religions are published, released or exposed, everything comes down to simple binary oppositions, reducing them to "looks disinterested"or "point of views".

Of religion, only one thing will remain: the ethics of martial self-discipline, asceticism and renunciation: Eli makes a disciple, Solara (Mila Kunis), who, in military attire, backpack and a shotgun in rayban making it the envy of Rambo, off the island of Alcatraz in a spirit of vengeance, thinking about returning to the city of villain Carnaggie and do justice.

In other words, The Book of Eli, in line with the neoconservative ideology after September 11, focuses on religion in the aspect of the repression of the individual before the divine missions high. Religion is contained in the Great Books of Alcatraz (after all, caused great misfortunes in the past), neutralized the power of the Holy (turns another book stocked), leaving only its power to cancel any free will or desire on behalf of an individual moral martial ethics and necessary in a world of struggle against the "axis of evil."

Credits:

  • Original title: The Book of Eli
  • Source: United States, 2010.
  • Director: Albert Hughes and Allen Hughes.
  • Screenplay: Gary Whitt.
  • Producer: Broderick Johnson, Andrew A. Kosove, Joel Silver, David Valdes and Denzel Washington.
  • Photography: Don Burgess.
  • Edition: Cindy Mollo.
  • Music: Atticus Ross.
    Cast: Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis

sábado, dezembro 19, 2009

In Search of the Negativity of the Sacred


We should look at filmic experience the moments when the narrative does not return to order, where conflicts are not reconciled, where the film's final sequences are not part of a whole (return to order), but leave the viewer cognitive gap, ambiguity .

For this blog the concept of the sacred must be sought from the reference of a negative theology. Why?

We saw the beginning of this century a wave of documentaries and fictional films that speak on behalf of a sacred experience, spiritual journey of self-knowledge etc.. he or she goes against the universe of self-help and New Age spiritualism, or more philosophically prepared, speak of a unification between science and religion and the unification of all dualities present in scientific or religious discourses.

The problem is that both this conception of the sacred associated with spirituality and the discourse of criticism of the dualism of science and religion start from the same theological matrix: Positive Theology. Unlike metaphysics, theology, as we know, believes in the transcendent reality as existing. And this transmundo sacred or divine can only be a full, before the individual existence. While this has a discrete existence marked by death, that is eternal, and therefore true.

Other than that, metaphysics bring potential negative elements for the formation of a negative theology. Let this distinction between metaphysics and theology made by Eduardo Losso from a text of Adorno:
"The difference between metaphysics and religion is the fact that not apply to a personal God or a transcendent element exists. Is not a science, rather, try to think something "behind the world", or another hidden world, stressing the difference between essence and appearance. If religion has a divine essence and absolute metaphysics thinks the problem of the relationship between this earlier sense, this essence to the world of appearance. (...) The metaphysics does not posit a deity and not give it a shape as theologians .(...) Adorno is unapologetic defense of metaphysics, precisely in this aspect, stating that it qualifies as not content with what is, not to say that what is not there. If religious need the confidence to assert the existence of non-existent, the metaphysical and more realistic and idealistic, so even refusing illusions, would the non-existent without affirming it. "(LOSSO, Eduardo Guerreiro and B. Negative theology Adorno - The secularization of mysticism in modern art. PhD thesis Faculdade de Letras da UFRJ, 2007, p.112-3)

"Do you want the non-existent without affirming it" is perhaps the essence of Negative theology that opposes the positivity of both theology and the sacred. The positivity of both science and religion start from an order above (all divine or natural) already exists, while the science (by the method) carried it, or religion (through faith) Have the experience of the sacred. In this sense, Sacred shall mean a mystical experience or faith that takes hold of the individual, causing him to glimpse her connection with the whole or the Truth.

Instead, the "want the non-existent without say so," we have a reversal of both metaphysics and theology, the denial of all before the actual experience of the individual. The negative experience of the sacred becomes not the annulment of the individual to connect with a whole ( "we are all a" totalitarian slogan of New Age spirituality), but unlike it, can only be a painful experience of breaking away from a all false and inauthentic. While religion gives a supposed security that we are backed by one who comforts us all, negativity brings sacred about the idea the pain and discomfort of the individual to forcibly integrated wholes or systems (social, political, religious, metaphysical, etc.). .

Search the negativity of the experience of the sacred is to seek those moments where the individual raises the malaise in the world in terms of the concept (gnosis?). Vanish points, times when we sense the absence of all simultaneously authoritative and comforting. These are those moments of rupture and transformation originated in altered states of consciousness: suspension, paranoia and melancholy. While the positive moral conscience, religion or simply common sense qualifies the individual pain and limitations of potential errors, sins, weaknesses, this is precisely where, in the apparent nihilism, the denial of any totalizing sense that is the real wild ride . There where everything seems to indicate instability, failure is the true transcendence where the spirit yearns to raise their physical existence to a supra-reality does not yet exist.

The experience of the sacred in this sense is much more the individual desire for transcendence of transcendence existing elevation to an extent already pre-existing individual. Like negative theology asserts the existence of God by his denial ( "If God is absent is because there needs to be if it did not exist could not be absent), the negativity of the sacred denies transcendence already existing in the name of desire by a supra-existence that does not exist.

Speaking of the sacred that invades television and film production on immanence confused with transcendence. Productions such as "We Are All One", "Who We Are" sell a purported transcendence to talk about finding a purpose, meaning in life, connecting with a whole cosmic consciousness. This abstraction can only be that of the total well-known (market, society, corporation, etc.). To which the individual must necessarily be integrated, overcoming their "fears" and "limitations". Therein lies the critical aspect of the negativity of the sacred: the desire for transcendence can only mean a break with these wholes.

Therefore we must seek the filmic experience the moments when the narrative does not return deposits, where conflicts are not reconciled, where the film's final sequences are not part of a whole (return to order), but leave the viewer cognitive gap, ambiguity. Where the experience of returning to reality after the lights were lit in the exhibition hall is not a comforting harmony after seeing players who have left the desirable possible reasons for resignation in relation to individual life. Moments where the individual unease about the world is large and the concept is expressed through the alterations of consciousness (sleep, paranoia and melancholy) that is a possibility of an existence entirely

quarta-feira, dezembro 16, 2009

Gnosticism Kabbalistic and Tecnognose: the shortcut to gnosis

The beginning of all our research and reflections on the recurrence of Gnosticism in Film and Audiovisual left the paradoxical confluence between mysticism and new technologies: Tecnognose. Unlike the movies where gnosticism gnosis is presented as the soul grows and refines from the body, Tecnognose matter is a golem that have deformed the order of the spirit to come alive. The consequences are totalitarianism and solipsism.

The secret alliance between mysticism and science flourish in the twentieth century with the revival of Kabbalistic myth of the Golem in the scientific and academic circles over the construction of modern technological utopia: a technological route traced by a benevolent elite that allows overcoming the ruins of a material world chaotic and imperfect and rescue the anthopos present in humanity, a return to pure Adamic trapped by mortality.

Kabbalah and the myth of the Golem

The Golem in Jewish mythology flourished during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but has its roots in the second and third centuries when Gnosticism created the myth of the perfect anthropos who fell in the imperfection. This myth of the decline is described in a basic narrative: emanation, and error trapping. In the Coptic Gospels anthropos is the first manifestation of the true God and above the Demiurge. Inside, contains the entire universe, particles of light through them, to redeem the material world and imperfect. However, it is ostensibly defeated by the forces of the Demiurge and kept imprisoned in circles materials. After this apparent decline, the anthropos hear the call of the God of Light, returning. But part of his soul is left behind, trapped. Particles of light serving prisoner that create the material cosmos as we know. Every time people hear the call of light, releasing trapped particles. When everyone has seized this call, the Anthropos (Primal Man) will be fully completed and the matter annihilated.

But how to return to the immaterial whether Anthropos inhabit this physical cosmos? Gnostics replied that the way to get that perfect Adam would be through asceticism or death. But there is another way, in an opposite direction: down to the world of matter. Medieval Kabbalists developed this method, namely, that of redemption through intense experiences with the matter, in their darkest realms. If before the ruins had perfection, it is the Kabbalist turn the matter to arrange the pieces that connect to all lost. Theogony attuned to the Cosmology.

This output produces the Golem ( "unformed"), the return to a state of matter misshapen and imperfect before God to form and perfection. The Talmud says that Adam, before receiving soul and language, was a Golem. God commands the matter through the code, building a world made out of letters. It is the basis of teourgia of Kabbalah. The only thing that separates us from God is sin. If divine creation is made from code, a being without sin can do the same. A person practicing this divine magic does not violate the sacred, but holds the potential of the spirit. The old discussions about the Golem in the twelfth and thirteenth revolve around this primary question: Can a wizard to create an equal or greater than the human? You can bring back Anthropos? For proponents of the medieval "ecstatic Kabbalah" the creation of the golem would be the culmination of a mystical experience, a symbol of union with God: the creation of life from the recitation of sacred letters.

The Shortcut to Gnosis

If the twentieth century physics and cosmology describe a scenario of chaos and improbability (it seems that God play dice with the universe through the formulation of chaos theory of N. Bohr and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Heisenberg), from this confirmation of the secret belief Gnostic primary flaw of the cosmos, the mystical Kabbalistic will be introduced in science to form a new biology made from a special relationship between biology and computer science.

Information Theory and model of computer binary code will offer a model for the design of DNA in the 1950s. Life comes to be seen as a kind of cues. DNA is a form of data processing, as well as the computer, enabling the instrument processing, therefore, be seen as a way of life emerging. Some now admit that we are near the time of the creation of new computer chips consist of DNA-RNA.

Robert Jawstron, NASA, was among the first to propose the advent of "disembodied intelligence". He envisions the day when we will become a "race of immortals" based on a computer mind.
"One day a scientist will be able to remove the contents of your mind and transfer it to the computer's memory. Because the mind is the essence of being, we can say that this scientist went into the computer and went to live there. At least we can say that from the moment that the human brain inhabits a computer it is released from the weakness of mortal flesh ... He is in control of their own destiny. The machine is your body, it is the mind of the machine ... This seems to me the most intelligent and mature life in the universe. Inhabit silicon plates and no longer limited by the duration of life inside the deadly cycle of a biological organism. This kind of being will live forever. "(Robert Jastrow, The Enchanted Loom: Mind in the Universe, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1984, pp. 166-67
Golem, the deformed area and entropy, modeled by binary codes sacred. If the DNA proves the coding divine matter through letters, the information will be the syntax that will remove the noise and the entropy of the organism that inhabits a universe flawed.

Creator of virtual reality, Jaron Lernier believe that this mystical motivation becomes the main attraction of cyberspace. For him, many hackers have the hope of one day live forever after a final upload to the inside of a computer. Lerner characterizes this fantasy as the beginning of a "culture of zombies dominated by ex-humans who" are ready to leave everything behind imagining living in a hard drive, only interacting with other minds and other elements of an environment that exists only in a software "Therefore, the essence of being, the mind (or particle of light that connects us to our original home, the Pleroma), can be scanned for information.

This is the shortcut to the Gnosis: technology as the quickest route to realizing the project of redeeming humanity exiled and imprisoned in circles materials.

This ancient Gnostic quest to transcend the flesh is the emotional subtext behind the euphoric reaction to each new computer on the market and every website or blog with frivolity that is thrown. Lernier even suggested a new psychological category of users: the "nerdiness" intellectually search scan any distinction of quality, feeling and affection. Emotionally, seeks shelter that protects the human intimacy and the demands of the body.
Happily, the guy takes off the body to live a fantasy of unlimited power.

Erick Felinto will appoint this guy as the ciberutopias "tire guy", a form of subjectivity that you want to release the limits of the body, one almost self divine and spiritual nature (pneuma). This guy would tire of the following characteristics: a total communication (such as intangible angels wandering in cyberspace without barriers to communicate), through "hipermediação equivalent to the immediacy of digital media" and the total mobility:
"Immersed in a world without borders, without limits, the ciberanjo enjoys the most absolute freedom of movement. Subjectivity as air, can move or extend at will, can even aim for ubiquity. In fact, it is not just mobility, but the ability to model the "space" around them. "(FELINTO Erick," The Tecnoreligião and the subject tire imagery of cyberspace ", In: Journal Alceu v.6 - n.12 - p. 115 to 125 - Jan. / Jun. 2006, p. 120)
How Felinto notes, the apparent variety of identity on the Internet and the multiplicity of selves in networks hides a weakening or fragmentation of subjectivity. As he concludes: "At a very dark, the subject of the networks I would like an absolute, you want to be in opposition even to expressions of otherness. This person often is limited to ratify the same in the sense that, as concluded a study of the ethnography of the Internet cited by Rüdiger "surfers, mostly not open to the other"

The individual in the network becomes a node that would just reiterate what it is external. As said Christopher Lasch, the appearance of a narcissistic ego great (pneumatic, spiritual) covers an emptying of one's own subjectivity, besieged, adapts and reproduces the mimetic environment to survive. It is the subject fractal, as a fragment that plays within himself, endlessly, the pattern of the whole (See the book Lasch's The Least I).

If the boundaries between Self and Other or disappear, first by the immediacy of the networks (the actual time it feeling that the map is the territory), second, the permeability of the ego and the third by a subjectivity that you want to get rid of limits of the body is in crisis the perception of otherness.

Gnosticism Alchemical versus Kabbalistic Gnosticism

While the Kabbalistic Gnosticism through technology and language, see the matter as a prison, confinement and limiting the potential of the spirit, gnosticism alchemical for the spirit behind the matter, life emerging from death, the order arising from chaos the soul that grows from the body. In short, Gnosticism search alchemical transmutation and not transcoding cabalistic. While the trend Kabbalistic matter is a golem formless and lifeless that have imbued with the spirit to come alive (binary code technology and information), the trend encourages alchemical metamorphosis and the redemption of the spirit through the material existence. The first is digital and abstract, the second is analog and sensual.

If the Kabbalistic Gnosticism seeks to shortcut through the technology of language and the fastest way to the spirit leave the field, the bias for the alchemical Great Denial, the tertium quid, a third alternative between illusion and reality. If the truth about God is beyond human knowledge, the denial of knowledge is the sacred path. The man receives the objects of knowledge and the words as they were vehicles of knowledge in the hope that they can reveal the truth of things.

In a world of illusions his knowledge can only be an illusion also. Neither illusion (created by an imperfect cosmos) and not the reality (Knowledge, Science and Language), but the sacred, the experience that leads the individual beyond those

Criado na UAM Grupo de Pesquisas "Religião e Sagrado no Cinema e Audiovisual"


Grupo de Pesquisas da Universidade Anhembi Morumbi objetiva ampliar, incentivar e divulgar a pesquisa na área.


O grupo dedica-se ao estudo das diferentes manifestações da Religião e do Sagrado no cinema e no audiovisual. O objetivo é compreender a forma como as diversas práticas religiosas lidaram e se apropriaram dos meios de comunicação, bem como buscar entender a experiência que permite a sobrevivência de fragmentos do discurso religioso, e do sagrado, na contemporaneidade. Essa compreensão passa pela busca de novos métodos de análise que permitam disponibilizar maneiras adequadas a todos os pesquisadores para lidarem e reconhecerem as várias facetas dos veios religiosos. Formam o grupo os seguintes pesquisadores:

Linha 1:

  • Celina Paiva: Busca compreender as múltiplas facetas da violência contemporânea e o sagrado.

  • Ilca Moya: Pretende aprofundas os estudos nas relações entre Sexo e Sagrado.

  • Geraldo de Lima: aprofunda suas pesquisas no campo dos mundos paralelos e examina os mundos propostos pelo sagrado.

  • Karyna Berenguer: aprofunda as relações do sagrado e da religião na obra de Andrei Tarkovsk.

  • Wilson Ferreira: Aborda a questão do Gnosticismo no cinema Contemporâneo.

Linha 2:


  • Angelúcia Habert: seu último trabalho analisava os gestos das benzedeiras no documentário de Andréia Tonacci. Situando-se nas relações antropológicas do tema.

  • Luiz Vadico: Estuda estética, narratividade e formação dos Filmes de Cristo, e desenvolve trabalho com o Campo do Filme Religioso.

  • Daniel Paes: Verifica a influência Católica no Cinema através das Revistas de Crítica cinematográfica mantida pelas instituições religiosas.

  • Marcos Brandão: aprofunda o tema da redenção e do sacrifício e as suas influências estéticas e narrativas nos musicais.

  • Miguel Serpa Pereira: Aprofunda as discussões relativas ao Cinema praticado por cineastas cristãos.
Leia mais no Blog "Luiz Vadico - Religião e Audiovisual"

terça-feira, dezembro 15, 2009

Viajantes, Detetives e Estrangeiros: protagonistas dos Filmes Gnósticos (Parte 1)

Nos fundamentos da mitologia pop encontramos personagens que anseiam pela gnose.

Dois livros essenciais para a discussão das bases da mitologia e dos arquétipos da cultura pop do século XX: Victória Nelson em seu livro “The Secret Life os Puppets” e Nelson Brissac Peixoto em “Cenários em Ruínas”.
Nelson defende que o imaginário popular do século XX (contos, histórias e quadrinhos e filmes góticos) é o resultado da confluência de expressões marginais e religião oculta no subterrâneo da cultura ocidental desde o século XV. Nelson descreve esta história subterrânea a partir da reapropriação das idéias de Platão que acabou influenciando profundamente crenças religiosas e científicas. Nelson exemplifica isso com obras literárias de Coleridge, Kafka e Poe para demonstrar como a alegoria da caverna passa a significar “o meio caminho entre a parte superior do mundo e a grande e mais misteriosa região abaixo”Para ela, das figuras literárias do século XX é interessante e válida a conexão do escritor Philip K. Dick (autodenominado escritor gnóstico de livros de ficção científica, muitos adaptados ao cinema como Blade Runner: O Caçador de Andróides – Blade Runner, 1982 - e Cidade das Sombras – Dark City, 1997) com figuras como Giordano Bruno e as arcanas tradições da Cabala e Alquimia.

Brissac Peixoto faz um verdadeiro inventário da imagerie arquetípica cinematográfica de filmes derivados de antigas novelas policias, filme noir, western e literatura de best-seller. Seu objetivo é o de descrever “os três modos de constituição da subjetividade e do mundo na cultura contemporânea” a partir das estórias míticas dos três tipos de protagonistas: o Detetive, o Viajante e o Estrangeiro.
É interessante que nos dois autores o protagonista da modernidade é encarado como um prisioneiro dentro de um cosmos hostil, um estrangeiro dentro do seu próprio país, o mal estar que perpassa toda a experiência humana como uma estranha sensação de deslocamento, de não fazer parte de uma totalidade, pressentida como corrompida e inautêntica. Victoria Nelson demonstrou como na cultura popular do século XX temos um aumento do fascínio por autômatos e bonecos com o surgimento do conceito marionete-mestre (humana ou divina) inserida dentro de uma cosmologia gnóstica das relações entre homem/autômato e homem/deus. Esse fascínio por autômatos ou marionetes dentro desse gnóstico esquema simbolizaria a maneira pela qual podemos avaliar a própria experiência humana, ou seja, como nos vemos como prisioneiros dentro de um cosmos hostil.

Anseio pela Gnose

As descrições que os dois autores fazem do protagonista da Modernidade mostram-se em grande parte análogas aos personagens iniciáticos que anseiam pela gnose tal qual descrito pelos três maiores pensadores do Gnosticismo Histórico: Basilides Valentim e Mani: como um iniciado pode escapar do ilusório mundo da matéria se toda a sua experiência provém deste mundo material? Se, em toda a sua vida, apenas habitou a aparente solidez das aparências como poderá distinguir algo que não seja mera aparência?
Os pensadores gnósticos ofereceram três soluções para esse enigma: suspensão, paranóia e melancolia. Três estados alterados de consciência que permitiriam ao iniciado alcançar a gnose e furar o véu da ilusão da realidade. Podemos aproximar cada um desses estados aos três tipos de protagonistas básicos dos filmes gnósticos, tal como descritos por Brissac Peixoto: O Viajante, o Detetive e o Estrangeiro.

O Viajante e o Estado de Suspensão

A teoria de Basilides sobre o verdadeiro Deus, tal qual descrita por Hipólito, pode ser resumida na idéia da Grande Negação: se a verdade sobre Deus está além do conhecimento humano, a negação do conhecimento é o sagrado caminho. O homem acolhe os objetos do saber e as palavras como fossem veículos do conhecimento na esperança de que possam revelar a verdade das coisas. Em um mundo de ilusões o conhecimento dele só poderá ser também ilusão. Por isso Basilides recomenda ao iniciado aos mistérios o silêncio. Ou seja, incapaz de discernir a diferença entre aparência e realidade Basilides sugere a suspensão, um estado de silêncio melancólico (os alunos que decidiam seguir a escola de Basilides eram obrigados a observar um silêncio de cinco anos com o propósito de criar condições para o cultivo da gnose sem dissipar suas intenções em conversas).
. A linguagem induz ao erro porque Deus é o Nada, está além daquilo que é possível ser nomeado. As coisas devem ser apreendidas sem a linguagem (arretos). Mais adiante, veremos como esta mitologia gnóstica marcará um conjunto de ícones e símbolos do cinema gnóstico. Chamaremos o personagem fílmico que vive neste estado de suspensão basilidiana como o Viajante.

A Paranóia do Detetive

Ao contrário dessa espécie de suspensão de Basilides, Valentim sugere uma espécie de “passividade ativa”, um agressivo questionamento do status quo a partir da radical suspeita sobre a realidade reinante: a paranóia. Para ele, as qualidades falhas do mundo material (ignorância, erro e mal) conduzem o homem a um erro mental. Como um ser que habita o tempo e o espaço, o homem é incapaz de, através do conhecimento, contemplar o plano atemporal e sem limites de Deus. Tal erro teria iniciado ainda no Pleroma quando as emanações, após surgirem do vazio e lançadas para a existência, passaram a buscar, em vão, as suas origens. Isso acabou criando um erro cósmico. Tal busca acabou sendo mal sucedida, pois estas emanações não se atentaram ao fato de que o Pai é incognoscível. Estava fundada a noção de Conhecimento, a crença de que todo conhecimento pode ter um objeto. Mas o objeto é inacessível ao conhecimento. Conhecimento do fenômeno é ignorância por reduzir a mente à rigidez. Este erro eterno causa o crescimento do desejo e do medo – desejo de querer controlar um objeto que lhe é externo e medo de não conseguir conhecer e controlar esse objeto – criando uma armadilha no interior de um miasma de objetos externos à mente. Porém, a matéria não é constituída por uma substância permanente, mas é um estado mental. Todos os seres nascidos nesse universo re-encenam este erro ao confundir ignorância com conhecimento.
Se o iniciado começa a suspeitar de que os objetos ao redor são ilusórios, como, então, poderá discernir entre a sanidade das suas percepções e a insanidade que o mundo pretende rotulá-lo? Como separar o desejo do medo? Através da paranóia. Diferente da estrita concepção narcísica de paranóia – a idéia de que o sujeito tem de que o mundo está focado em uma perseguição contra si próprio – a concepção valentiniana está no limite entre a sanidade e a loucura, através de uma desconfiança radical em relação ao mundo ao redor que está dado. Vivendo nesta espécie de limbo, corre o risco de cair para um lado ou para o outro: tornar-se irremediavelmente insano ou preparar-se para ocultar-se em uma lúcida loucura habitando um espaço entre a claridade e a instabilidade emocional. Veremos que esse é um tema predileto nos filmes gnósticos. Permeia argumentos, construções de personagens e o próprio ambiente iconográfico talvez da maioria dos filmes analisados. Se, por definição, o gnosticismo nega a realidade material como uma ilusão fabricada por propósitos desconhecidos, a paranóia é o caminho através do qual as personagens buscarão a iluminação. Chamaremos o protagonista que surge nesses filmes como o Detetive.
A Melancolia do Estrangeiro

Finalmente, temos a melancolia como solução da escola gnóstica maniqueísta. Mani sustenta que o cosmos é dividido em dois poderes opostos: Bem e Mal, Luzes e Trevas, Espírito e Matéria. Influenciado pelo dualismo de Zoroastro, Mani cria uma visão de alta intensidade dramática. No início o universo foi dividido entre deidades das Trevas (habitando os círculos materiais) e da Luz. A certa altura o mundo material atacou as regiões espirituais. Para contra-atacar, Deus criou um ser humano primordial (anthropos, uma figura cósmica não ligada a Adão ou a outros seres humanos, a não ser de forma indireta) para descer ao mundo material e combater as forças das Trevas armado com cinco elementos (fogo, vento, água, luz e éter). Mas foi ostensivamente derrotado e aprisionado. O Rei da Luz enviou, então, um espírito para trazer esse anthropos de volta para casa. Porém, apenas a sua forma conseguiu retornar, deixando para trás os cinco elementos que compunham a sua alma. Para libertar essas partículas, Deus criou o cosmos com Adão e seus filhos. A cada momento, a criatura humana, um anthropos decadente, ouve o chamado da luz para que, ao cultivar o espírito, emancipe partes da alma até que todas as almas sejam libertadas e a matéria seja aniquilada. É claro que as forças das Trevas procuram impedir esse intento por meio de uma dramática luta cósmica.
A chave para libertar-se da conspiração das forças do mal é a melancolia. A partir dessa “falha da racionalidade”, o homem recusa os códigos de uma sociedade inautêntica por meio do desdém, depressão e tristeza
Diferente da paranóia valentiniana, onde o homem não conhece plenamente a natureza da atmosfera que conspira e tenta juntar os pedaços de um quebra-cabeça em busca de algum sentido, na melancolia maniqueísta o homem já sabe que foi abandonado no mundo do Mal. A única esperança para escapar do destino é cultivando um desdém em relação a tudo ao redor e fugir das tentações consoladoras do Cristianismo e do Hedonismo.
A suspensão de Basilides parece ser muito próxima da melancolia de Mani. A diferença é que aqui experimentamos uma melancolia agressiva. Enquanto a suspensão melancólica de Basilides induz ao silêncio e a renúncia a qualquer instrumento da linguagem como fonte de erro, a melancolia agressiva de Mani sugere a exposição da ferida aberta do espírito ao negar os consolos do mundo material até alcançar a insanidade febril. Veremos mais adiante que filmes como Show de Truman desenvolvem essa dramática narrativa dualista. À personagem que vai incorporar esta filosofia maniqueísta daremos o nome de o Estrangeiro.
Esses são os três estados alterados de consciência que criam condições para a irrupção da gnose, um conhecimento que brota do coração de forma misteriosa e intuitiva. Dentro do filme gnóstico, estes três estados vão orientar os protagonistas na busca pela Verdade. São verdadeiras transformações íntimas, salvações individuais.
É importante salientar que as provações que os protagonistas vão enfrentar não são decorrentes de pecados, erros ou transgressões. Ou seja, a jornada de sofrimentos e dificuldades não se constitui em castigo. É aqui que temos uma diferença fundamental entre o filme gnóstico dos outros tipos de filme: o protagonista não passa por uma expiação, mas está em busca da salvação através do conhecimento espiritual.
A maioria dos sistemas religiosos reconhece, de alguma forma, que o mundo é imperfeito. A humanidade é o principal vilão. A corrente judaico-cristã, por exemplo, sustenta que a transgressão do primeiro casal humano precipitou a queda não somente da raça humana, mas de toda a criação. Ao contrário, o gnosticismo acredita que se o mundo é falho é porque foi criado de maneira falha. O mundo não caiu, foi imperfeito desde o começo. Foi obra de uma divindade imperfeita, o Demiurgo, uma forma híbrida de consciência emanada de um plano transcendente e harmônico (a Pleroma) a partir do Deus original e perfeito. Ele fez a forma, mas não a vida interior do mundo. Inebriado com o poder e por acreditar ser o único deus do universo, aprisiona o homem e a sabedoria (Sophia) no interior da criação, aprisionando-os.
Portanto, toda a jornada de provas, dificuldades e sofrimentos pela qual o protagonista terá que passar é resultado de um mundo corrompido e falho na sua essência e não por culpa dele.
Caracterizando a gnose como o oposto da episteme (do conhecimento científico), jamais o protagonista vai buscar fora dele um instrumento que o ajude a realizar a reforma íntima (livro, religião, terapia etc.). Como acredita o Gnosticismo, tudo do que necessitamos já está dentro de nós.

domingo, dezembro 13, 2009

Pesquisa da Pós em Cinema da UAM apresenta religiosidade no cinema documental


Ao aproximar a Teoria da Tragédia Moderna com o jogo da representação cinematográfica, pesquisa aponta para o gnosticismo no cinema documental

Participei neste último sábado (12/12) de uma banca examinadora do trabalho de conclusão da pós lato sensu em cinema da Universidade Anhembi Morumbi. O trabalho era de Vivian Cristina Cardozo com o tema “Da Tragédia Moderna ao Jogo de Representação no Documentário Jogo de Cena de Eduardo Coutinho”. A apresentação oral de Vivian apenas confirmou-me o que senti na leitura do trabalho: uma potencial discussão sobre a presença da religiosidade e do sagrado no audiovisual.
Vivian inicia fazendo um histórico das transformações do conceito de tragédia na arte dramática: das trajetórias dos personagens míticos da antiguidade, passando pelas tragédias medievais e elizabetanas (momento de transição do herói coletivo para o herói indivíduo) até chegar a tragédia na Modernidade. Temos, então, um novo modelo estético ficalizado na angústia, sofrimentos e dilemas individuais. A Justiça é algo abstrata, restando ao homem isolado no mundo apegar-se à “religiosidade” para fazer frente à experiência da morte e da perda.
Vivian vai localizar este componente no documentário de Eduardo Coutinho Jogo de Cena, onde 23 mulheres relatam seus acontecimentos trágicos, “pequenas tragédias pessoais de mulheres comuns, que tentaram resgatar suas próprias histórias por meio da experiência audiovisual.”
O interessante é a aproximação que autora faz entre o foco trágico de Coutinho com elementos narrativos auto-reflexivos: atrizes que interpretam as protagonistas reais e que, mais tarde, falam para a câmera a dificuldade que tiveram para interpretar o papel, narrativa que incorpora elementos cênicos típicos do teatro etc. O jogo de representação de Coutinho (atrizes, cenários, visão frontal do espectador e personagens reais) cria situações ambíguas: ao entrar uma pessoa em cena, o espectador não sabe se é uma entrevistada ou atriz. O objetivo é produzir distanciamento, reflexão sobre as histórias contadas.
O resultado da pesquisa de Vivian foi a produção de um pequeno documentário dirigido pela autora, Aquarius, onde em aproximadamente 10 minutos vemos o depoimento de duas atrizes sobre experiências de perda e morte (também experimentados na vida pessoal da autora). Temos aqui o apego à “religiosidade”: sonhos que o papel volta para se despedir, a gravidez de uma das atrizes contrapondo-se com a morte (morte/renascimento) etc.


Cena de "Aquarius"

Que experiência “religiosa” é essa? Com certeza não uma religiosidade cristã tradicional, mas uma experiência muito mais mística do que propriamente religiosa. Faz parte da tragédia na Modernidade: isolado em um mundo aparentemente sem sentido, dominado por uma percepção de Justiça fria, distante e abstrata, o indivíduo apega-se a fragmentos de religiosidade como verdadeiras bóias para enfrentar a corrente. O resultado é uma percepção muito mais mística do que religiosa. Estamos nos aproximando de um espírito gnóstico de percepção do sagrado. É o componente central da Tragédia na Modernidade.
Tal qual a literatura Romântica dos séculos XVIII e XIX que experimentou a insuficiência da linguagem em representar esta natureza trágica da Modernidade, temos no pequeno documentário Aquarius de Vivian e em Jogo de Cena de Coutinho o recurso da IRONIA como forma de refletir esses limites da representação. Isto é, a única forma de representar através de um documentário esta natureza trágica do indivíduo e o seu apego a um misticismo gnóstico é através de uma narrativa irônica: assim como a realidade é uma ilusão ou, no mínimo, carece de um sentido imanente, da mesma forma a narrativa fílmica é ilusão e ambiguidade, exigindo do espectador distanciamento para desvelar os véus do ilusionismo cinematográfico.

sábado, dezembro 12, 2009

From Vogler's hero's journey to the film's hero Gnostic

The mythic Hero's Journey by Vogler described as the universal basis of every script seems to resemble the narrative journey of the protagonist of the film Gnostic (Fall, Ascension, Plenty). But there is one essential difference: Negative Theology

Last week, during the class structure of the discipline Roadmap given by me in the course of Communication (Advertising) University Anhembi Morumbi (UAM), discussing the mythical character of the hero, as described by Christopher Vogler in his book Writer's Journey . Based on the ideas of the historian and researcher of mythology Joseph Campbell, the Hero's Journey with the whole gallery of characters (the Pícaro, the Shadow, the Herald, the Chameleon, etc..) Would be to Voegle, the basic narrative structure of all or any screenplay movie being based on a model of mythic narrative present in all cultures and times.

What draws attention in describing Vogler is the reason that drives the hero to start the mythic journey:

"The impetus for this journey is to change something in their common world, and he goes to seek the restoration of this world, or he is unhappy in your world and the cause for a change. In both cases the reason for the journey is the lack of something. The hero feels incomplete and goes in search of its fullness. The result is the transformation of the hero himself. Even if the environment does not change the hero sees the shortest way. "VOGLER, Christofer. Writer's
Journey)

For many readers of this blog or follow discussions about the film Gnostic, the description given by Vogler seems to resemble greatly with the film's protagonist Gnostic. Altered states of consciousness of the protagonists Gnostics (the suspension of Solo, Detective's paranoia and melancholy's Foreign) depart also dissatisfaction and incompleteness. Everyone seeks the fullness.

But with one fundamental difference: Negative Theology. Or, in filmic terms, the break with the order or totality. The protagonist Gnostic not only becomes inwardly as the renovation involves the breaking, in toto, with an ontological perception of reality.

A short history of the "breakdown of order"

The story of the "breakdown of order" in the movie is interesting. In this "slapstick cinema (silent films" of pie "), the hero's path leads to the classic happy ending anarchic: the heroes win the challenges and limitations imposed by the system (social, police, economic, etc).

As an example, the end of the anthology film of Harold Lloyd The Human Fly (The Safety Last, 1923) where, after climbing a building with his bare hands in search of employment and marriage, though hampered by a police officer then, everyone wins hitches, reaches the top and find your bride for the final kiss.

Indeed the figure of the order, the police, it is ridiculed. Since the group The Keystone Cops (a gathering of police awkward that every mission is transformed into disasters that turn aside the order), the figure of the police is ridiculed, and can never hold anyone. The characters of Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Harold Lloyd, and even at the PA system, the Three Stooges, they always escape the police, denouncing the hypocrisy of the Act is unnecessary to join the system.

With the economic depression after the crash New York Stock Exchange in 1929, the proletarian retreat from the theater to make room for the middle class demanding a political and moral framework in film production. Mainly from the movie musicals, the scheme is to be broken and return the order presented in the narratives. For example, in music all start singing and dancing and suddenly return to their roles as if nothing had happened. This veritable fantasy-cliche develops, varies and is updated over the decades and film genres.

Since horror films (where the monster or serial killer who murders young people first have sex, use drugs or simply disobey their parents), to road movies (like Easy Rider - Easy Rider, 1969 - or Thelma and Louise -- Thelma and Louise, 1991 - where the main characters die after breaking the order) to the thrillers or action (where the happy ending, unlike the film slapstick, is the moral hero restoring political and social order), we have several variants of this fantasy cliche.

Since the films Gnostics have a peculiar way of breaking with the "order": gnosis. But this break is not just a break with the political or social order, but the break with the notion of ontological reality. The break with the Totality and comforting rationalizations that house the individual within a "sense" or "purpose".

Consider two movies that work with a potentially Gnostic: the symbolism of the remote control as a device that alters or interferes not only on TV but in reality present in Life in Black and White (Pleasantville, 1998) and Click (Click, 2006 ).
Click on an architect workholic wins a strange universal remote that allows you to back up or situations from different parts of your life. What could give the banks the questions or at least fear or ecstasy metaphysical or philosophical, rather, reverse itself in the immediate interest of instrument: accelerating the parties "boring" life (dinner with the family, take the dog for a walk , foreplay with his wife before sex, etc..) so he can concentrate on work.

The narrative moves from the metaphysical or potential interest Gnostic (reality as a constructu, an artificial sequence of holographic images) to a moral bias, where the protagonist is punished for breaking with family values.
By contrast, in Life in Black and White, another strange gain remote control of a no less strange TV technician, two people will be sucked up into the interior of a television series of 50 years. That day the young heroes will question not only the values of the world in black and white of the 50's, as the values of their current (90 years). Your questions will be marked by a strong symbolism and iconography of biblical origin of the Old Testament (Paradise, apple, flood, shrubs, bulbs etc..).

It is from this altered state of consciousness initiated by remote control, the heroes glimpse another reality that transcends that of the TV screen or the reality of young people in the 90's dominated by images of MTV.

Just as the mythical hero's journey described by Voegle, the actors perform an inner transformation. However, this implies a break and transcendence (or "broken order" in terms filmic). The total is social or divine / cosmic is denied: nor illusion, much less the illusion of reality, but the search of a third element beyond oppositions or dualities that requires the cosmos.

Just like the negative theology that reveals the existence of God from its denial (or the inability of language to express its existence) and how to Theodor Adorno with his negative dialectics ( "Negative Dialectics Negative theology is" read) reveal the falsity of the Whole seeking transcendence in particular and individual, the movie Gnostic search from the denial (sometimes nihilistic) the order of a total (social, divine, religious) the fullness that would be the last overruns of the material cosmos present.

The "transformation" of the hero at the end of the mythic journey as described by Vogler is still marked by the positive: it is a much less processing and more intimate adaptation to an all around you. The penalty would be a tragic death as the end of the movie Thelma and Louise.

quinta-feira, dezembro 10, 2009

Basements, subways and alleys: The Meaning of the Cave in Cinema

Basements, subways and alleys: The Meaning of the Cave in Cinema
The symbolism of the cave has a long history that involves not only the philosophy and development of Western rationality, but even the fate of the experience of the sacred today. This will be reflected in a diverse symbology and iconography present in films from many different genera. (Photo: Following Cloverfield - 2008)


The tradition of the caves as previous camera from a subterranean world, land of the dead, the half-way to contact the gods in a separate reality of the human is present from archaic times. Greek philosophers Pre-Socratic philosophers, for example, were based on a tradition of seeking wisdom in the darkness without any light, through dream incubation in caves. Those who initiated these sacred sites participating in a journey in the underworld in hopes of finding a deity who would become his friend and mentor. These cults had the cave as a place of healing and connection with the transcendental world beyond our senses.

From Plato and Socrates have a twist: the cave will be presented as a parable of the narrowness of perception derived from sensory experience, therefore, a place where we escape to find the truth. This parable shows the world view of the ignorant, who lives in common sense, and philosopher in the eternal search for truth. Trapped inside a cave, merely to see shadows on the wall projected from the outside world (the World of Ideas, as opposed to the world of sensible things).

Six centuries later, the belief in a higher world hidden behind the transitional forms of sense is still present in ancient cults, Hellenistic, philosophical schools and new religions, most notably Christianity. This abandonment of the tradition of the caves, will be an opposition between the forms of the search for Truth: espisteme versus gnosis, faith versus mysticism, reason versus intuition. The Mundus subterraneus, a place of secrets, dreams and death, channel connection to the transcendent, is repressed by the symbolism of light that reveals all the mysteries and illuminates ignorance.

This model of a cosmos built on two levels (the upper world where lies the creator and an underworld, torn copy of the instance) is the secular scientific rationalism and the Protestant. The decree of the end of miracles by Protestantism (or the end of direct contact with the spiritual realm) and a reduction in the world to a single level in science (the empirical world) does nothing more than secularizing ancient Hellenistic duality in a modern duality: subject and object, ego and id, culture and nature, etc.

But the light of episteme creates shadows. The underground world is not really dead. A sort of "sub-zeitgeist" will appear in popular culture where the supernatural is only manifest in dark realms, demonized.
"Think of the deeper space vehicles in the last ten action movies have attended, always shown as a place of danger and discord, where the hero or heroine is attacked by the villain, where car chases end in mass destruction. Or the mysterious regions in meters where dead souls manifest themselves as hordes of homeless. Or the mazes of these films always located under fictional Chinatowns. Or the many worlds and alternate side of the films of science fiction, including the mysterious caves of planets like the movie Alien (1979) claims filled eggs that infect the crew of the spaceship Nostromo with a destructive and aggressive organism that kills every body that hosts. Or the idea, repeated in one way or another in almost all fiction or virtual reality film of what we see around us is an illusion created to mask another reality that lies below or above us. "(Victoria NELSON. . The Secret Life of Puppets. Harvard University Press, 2001, p.6)
With the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century followed by the first polar expeditions, the Mundus subterraneus now no longer be accepted as a real location and was transformed into a dummy site transcendental and psychological literature and movies. The tradition of the caves as the location for the drive seeking the sacred in the darkness and dreams is demonized in modern culture as dangerous places where Evil dwells And the magician and mentor of this kingdom (of Zoroastrian priests of ancient Persia to medieval alchemists) is transformed into the stereotype of the mad scientist whose energies trying to manipulate darkness comes from groundwater.

Fascination for the "immediate religious experience"

This symbolism and iconography of the cave in the movies is what fascinates the public. There is the villain, the evil one who breaks the order of Light, the episteme, the logical and scientific world of everyday life. In offering what Jung calls "immediate religious experience," to numinous experience, in terms set by Rudolf Otto translated phrase mysterium tremendum et fascinans augustum.

The numinous is an effect that seizes and dominates the subject, the more its victim than creator. Condition of the subject and beyond its control, the perception of the presence of the numen arousing a feeling of grandeur, wonder and respect. It is the perception of the mysterious, the wholly other that goes beyond the sphere of the usual, the intelligible and familiar. The mysterium represent the das ganze Andere (the other completely), the qualitatively different, which has two subjects: the tremendum, repulsive factor that causes fear or terror, and fascinans, which attracts, fascinates.

This is immediate religious experience, the numinous experience (fascinating because it is a manifestation of the magma repressed unconscious and repulsive to be the eruption of the Weird, or what is potentially destabilizing) that needs to be controlled by religious symbolic systems for nature ambiguous and disturbing numen is diluted.

With the weakening of gnosis and the "end of miracles" decreed by Protestant Christianity, as well as the influence of so-called scientific illustration which excludes even religious men who can not reconcile religion with science, new forms of mediation should be created. Come secularized forms of symbolically deal with the "immediate religious experience," that is, with the flow of the human psyche that comes up in everyday life. The film would be one of them.

Sacred as "breakdown of order"

The tradition of cave entirely another search, transcendence, the rupture as a whole established. The mythology of the cave as it interpreted by Plato and Socrates is the inaugural act of the liquidation of the individual reduced to the condition of ignorance before the Truth (Logus, episteme etc..).

See the order is broken by the mad scientist, the serial killer, the terrorist villains or graduates of the kingdoms underground (caves, labs in basements, subways - the movie Devil's Advocate (1999) only the devil moves by subway in New York) fascinates the viewer by bringing this experience archaic religious and archetypal.

But the danger of the sacred experience is streamlined and brought under control in the film narrative: the villains are punished, the "cave" is destroyed or buried forever and Episteme and reason is necessary as the only possible destination.

quarta-feira, dezembro 09, 2009

Primeiro lugar: o que é Gnosticismo e Gnose?

É um termo usado para designar todo um conjunto de seitas sincréticas de religiões iniciatórias e escolas de conhecimento nos primeiros séculos da era cristã. É também aplicado a renascimentos atuais desses grupos e, por analogia, a todos os movimentos que se baseiam no conhecimento secreto da “gnose”. Essa generalização pode levar a uma confusão, tornando a noção de “gnóstico” ou “gnosticismo” vaga e escorregadia. Pela natureza oculta do ensinamento gnóstico e pelo fato de muito material a respeito ser proveniente das críticas da ortodoxia cristã torna-se difícil uma descrição precisa dos antigos sistemas gnósticos. A descoberta, em 1945, dos textos gnósticos do século IV em Nag Hammadi (Egito) trouxe uma maior clarificação sobre a natureza do gnosticismo na Antiguidade, embora muitos concordem que o tema continue com muitos pontos dúbios (veja http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html).
Ao mesmo tempo, o chamado moderno gnosticismo tem se desenvolvido a partir das origens no Ocultismo do século XIX. Em meados daquele século, Eliphas Levy trás todo o espectro de assuntos do gnosticismo à luz do dia por meio da discussão da cabala judaica. Do pioneirismo de Levy, surge em cena a maior figura do renascimento do oculto: Helena Blavatsky que se tornou a figura embrionária do movimento espiritual alternativo não somente do século XIX mas de grande parte do século XX. A fundação da Sociedade Teosófica em 1875 por Blavatsky e o trabalho de seu devotado aluno G.R.S.Mead (tradutor especializado em textos gnósticos e herméticos), tornou o gnosticismo acessível ao público fora da academia, o que preparou o caminho para o gnosticismo para as massas no século seguinte.
Por isso o termo “gnosticismo” tem sido aplicada a muitas seitas modernas que têm acesso aos arcanos iniciáticos. Longe de trazer uma clarificação torna ainda mais impreciso o conceito, obstruindo a verdadeira compreensão histórica.
Alguns autores sugerem uma divisão entre o Gnosticismo Cristão ou Histórico (que fez uma interpretação heterodoxa ou mística dos Evangelhos) e o Gnosticismo Hermético (um conceito que se aplica a toda uma gama de escolas ou seitas que se baseia na “gnosis”, uma forma especial de conhecimento esotérico iniciático) . Outros afirmam que a imprecisão do conceito se deve às próprias origens sincréticas do Gnosticismo Histórico (um amálgama de platonismo, neo-platonismo, estoicismo, budismo, antigas religiões semiticas e cristianismo) . Stephan Hoeller, por exemplo, prefere falar em “atitude gnóstica” para explicar os sucessivos renascimentos ao longo da história:
"Consiste em uma certa atitude da mente, uma ambiência psicológica (...) um certo tipo de alma é, por sua própria natureza, gnóstica. Qualquer que seja o seu ambiente geográfico, cultural ou espiritual esta gravita inevitavelmente para uma visão de mundo gnóstica. Quando aquela predisposição ideológica encontra o estímulo de algum elemento de transmissão gnóstica, está fadado a surgir um renascimento" (HOELLER, Stephan A., Gnosticismo: tradição oculta. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Era, 2005, p. 155-156).

No entanto, alguns historiadores acreditam que a característica unificadora das diversas escolas e seitas é a significante influência budista/hinduísta nas re-interpretações da Bíblia, em particular do livro do Gênesis, através da adição de um prólogo original . Esta re-interpretação inclui tanto uma cosmogonia como um sistema moral, muito mais do que uma descrição factual da criação. Está delineado no clássico gnóstico “Apócrifo de João”. , um dos principais textos encontrados em Nag Hammadi. Este livro desenvolve todos os temas míticos sobre os quais os visionários gnósticos irão propor suas respostas. Escrito em torno de 150 DC, nele pode ser encontrado o mito da queda, criação e salvação. Para ele a origem da vida não está no Deus bíblico, mas em um radical e transcendente poder, uma divindade mais elevada e definida em termos tão abstratos que exclui todo antropomorfismo e envolvimento com o mundo. Para além desse mistério, encontram-se diversas emanações andrógenas, aeons, cada qual sendo uma manifestação única de suas origens. Juntos, as origens e suas manifestações compõem o Pleroma, a harmoniosa e espiritual plenitude. Um desses aeons, Sophia, rompeu o equilíbrio ao criar um novo ser sem a aprovação do grande Espírito ou de sua consorte. Esta turbulência produziu um ser ignorante, Ialdabaoth. Este, imediatamente, foi exilado no reino material fora do Pleroma. Sozinho no reino da matéria, estupidamente passou a acreditar ser o deus único e produziu um cosmos imperfeitamente baseado no Pleroma. Imediatamente cria anjos (archons) para governar o mundo e ajudar na criação do homem dando origem a um universo onde a matéria dividida está no lugar do espírito unificado e a desilusão substitui a verdade original. O próprio homem é moldado através da imagem perfeita do Pai e aprisionado neste universo imperfeito. A esperança está em que a Eternidade secretamente sempre alcança os homens e planta a partícula divina (pneuma) nas almas doentes e sofredoras. Temos o início de uma luta contínua entre os poderes da luz e da escuridão pela possessão dessas partículas. Elas somente serão ativadas no homem no momento de iluminação (gnose) onde tomamos consciência de sermos exilados das nossas origens, o Pleroma. A partir daí, rejeitamos as formas e convenções do plano físico como fantasmas de um pesadelo, como ilusões perpetradas por um deus que conspira contra nós.
"Do mesmo modo, a mãe também enviou para baixo o seu espírito, que é nela a semelhança e a cópia daqueles que estão no pleroma, pois é ela que preparará a moradia para os aeons que descerão. E ele os fez beber a água do esquecimento do chefe archon, para que não soubessem do lugar de onde eles tinham vindo Conseqüentemente, a semente permaneceu por algum tempo (lhe) atendendo, para que, quando o Espírito vier dos aeons sagrados, ele possa se elevar e ser curado da sua imperfeição, e para que assim todo o pleroma possa novamente se tornar um lugar perfeito e sagrado” (“O Apócrifo de João” IN: ROBINSON, James M. A Biblioteca de Nag Hammadi. São Paulo: Madras, 2007)


Os poderes de Ialdabaoth aprisionam o homem em um corpo material que bebe da água do esquecimento. Finalmente Cristo, outro aeon, é enviado para “salvar” (“curar” seria a palavra certa) a humanidade ao fazer as pessoas lembrarem-se das suas origens celestiais. Somente aqueles que tiverem o conhecimento (iluminação ou gnose) retornarão ao Pleroma; os outros serão reencarnados até alcançarem o conhecimento.
Veremos que essa cosmogonia e sistema moral será o ponto de partida das reflexões dos três principais filósofos do gnosticismo dos princípios da era cristã: Valentim, Basilides e Mani. Cada um deles vai oferecer um método diferente de resgate (gnose) desta partícula divina interior, criando uma espécie de mitologia que será recorrente no grupo de filmes gnósticos. No próximo post vamos discutir cada um desses métodos e como eles se manifestam no filme gnóstico.

Being John Malkovich: Reincarnation and Identity by Gnostic point of view

A strange film, bizarre and weird. From an argument absolutely nonsense (A man gets a new job. There is a door, hidden, leading to the mind of actor John Malkovich, where you can stay for 15 minutes before being spat out on the road. Impressed with the discovery rent addresses the transition to other people, including our own John Malkovich), the film raises profound symbolism around the Identity and Reincarnation.


Unlike most Western religions, the ultimate goal of Gnosticism is not found in life after death. Gnostics sought to become "living Christs", ie seek to overcome ignorance and death. In this state, the mysteries of creation and not only would manifest, time and space would dissolve before the conscience, and all the illusions of reality would collapse. As we can see in these two passages in the apocryphal gospels of Philip and Thomas,
"If you saw Christ, Christ became
This
person is no longer a Christian, but Christ himself
If someone can win the
resurrection will never die "
(Gospel of Philip)
"Jesus said: Whoever drinks from my mouth
will become as I, myself am going to be that person,
and the hidden things
will be revealed to him "
(Gospel of Thomas)
Gnosticism sees in reincarnation a perverse strategy of the Demiurge (Yaldabaoth, the false god, creator of the material cosmos, intoxicated by power, believed to be the only reigning deity in the universe) to keep us in this world into oblivion. Condemned to start again from scratch, do not add knowledge, forgotten by subtraction.
For many Gnostics, the failure to achieve this symbolically meant being trapped in the endless round of cosmic dragon eating its own tail, Ouroboros (see figure below).
"But what is apparent is that Gnosticism despises reincarnation, as well as eternal damnation or extinção.A obvious reason is to be trapped inside the Ouroboros means the venom of the continuous neglect and ignorance, liberating antidote to the opposite of Gnosticism. A life or a thousand is so useless, unless a person can light the spark of God and become like Christ. Despite the image of the Gnostics smísticos be to ease, the truth is that Gnosticism has an underlying sense of urgency, as the reincarnation, is also absent from most Western religions. "(CONNER, Michael." Gnostics Do Believe in Reincarnation ? In: Aeon Byte, available in
http://aeonbyte.blogspot.com/2010/03/examiner-article-do-gnostics-believe-in.html)


Reincarnation is forgotten, the conviction to start again from scratch. That would mean the loss of identity. A film that masterfully makes a parable of this issue is the enigmatic and surreal film Being John Malkovich
The puppet is the main symbol of this film. Besides the obvious symbolism in the narrative present (Craig - John Cusack - uses his ability to manipulate identities puppeteer and puppet as parallel to the condition manipulated John Malkovich), there is a deeper meaning: the puppets are direct descendants of the ancient idols divine, loved and excited by their priests.
Victoria Nelson in The Secret Life of Puppets demonstrated how the popular culture of the twentieth century we have an increasing fascination with robots and dolls with the emergence of the concept puppet master (human or divine) inserted into a Gnostic cosmology of the relationship between man - automaton and man / god. This fascination with robots or puppets in this Gnostic scheme symbolize the way in which we can assess their own human experience, that is how we see ourselves as prisoners in a hostile cosmos. Moreover, the puppets metamorphosed, in modernity, in figures such as robots, cyborgs, androids and, more recently, in the hybridization of the human body. Only now, with a further ingredient: the creation of a mediation to which the human consciousness to download and transcends the prison of flesh. The human desire to migrate to mediation ideally shaped.
The film symbolizes the longing for mediation at various times. We can see this in two dialogues. After having sex with Maxine Malkovich learned that Lotte was in his head, provocatively comments to Craig:
Craig: Do you torture me on purpose?
Maxine: I fell in love.
Craig: I think not. I fell in love, and people
are so passionate.
Maxine: He picked the unrequited variety. This is bad for
your skin!
Craig: You're bad Maxine!
Maxine: You know what it's like two
people looking at you with total lust and devotion through the same pair of
eyes?
People in love for each other, but need to consolidate mediation relationships. A kind of platonic sex where the object of passion is seen through the eyes ideals, raising exhibitionistic impulses in Maxine. Or the desire for mediation stems from the denial of the current physical condition:
First JM Inc. Customer: When they say I can be another what they mean?
Craig: That's exactly what we said. We can put you in the body of another person for 15 minutes.
First JM Inc. Customer: Can I be who I want?
Craig: Well, you can be John Malkovich.
First JM Inc. Customer: Perfect! It is my second choice, but it's wonderful. I am a fat man. I am sad and fat. "
Reincarnation and Mediation


This discussion turns to the theme of identity, linked also to the issue of mediation and Reincarnation: be through the other (person, puppets etc..). And also the revolt and the desire to break free of the strings that control the identity: who manipulates, who is actually inside of you controlling it?


The first sequence of the film summarizes the two dimensions of the theme of identity. See Craig manipulating a puppet and doing what he calls the "Dance of Despair and Disillusionment." Craig manipulates the puppet as an intermediary for himself, as he says at one point the film (the voice of a puppet): "Craig, why do you love puppeteering" asks Maxine. "Maxine, I'm not sure. Perhaps the idea of being someone else for a while. Being in another skin, think and move differently, feel differently, "says Craig's puppet. At the same time, the doll looks up, finds nothing but a puppet, rebels and begins to break the fourth miniature small stage in the workshop of Craig. The puppet rebels with their condition and want to get rid of the handler. Is the condition of John Malkovich later in the story.

What we have here is the theme of identity crisis in the contemporary world. Craig is a puppeteer who, although talented, is unemployed. His wife Lotte says he should get a small job. "Who wants to hire a puppeteer in winter as the economy today."

Craig is a talented puppeteer the archivist at Lestercorp (for having fast hands), and after work, explores the "beak" to make money from the portal leading to the head of John Malkovich. But in these three situations, there is one thing that unites them: the search for a mediation that makes you transcend your life frustrated and melancholy at the beginning, the puppets and in the end, the head of John Malkovich.
In the first case, the transfer is symbolic, the second is literal: transfer your consciousness for mediation. The narrative links this shift to a religious aspect or mystical reincarnation.

All the central characters of the film, and customers JM Inc., want to live 15 minutes the head of John Malkovich. They seek to move to mediation as a way to transcend their miserable existences. It is a parable of the spirit of the end of the century, where new technologies will offer through virtual avatars, profiles created in blogs, orkuts, twitters, etc.. the possibility of living other or multiple identities. In the film the characters realize that is a false gnosis.

Instead, the group of Dr. Lester for the true gnosis. It aims to achieve eternal life preaching a "small" blow to the Demiurge: circumvent the law of reincarnation. Gnostic mythology sees the reincarnation of an evil Demiurge strategy to keep us in this world into oblivion. Condemned to start again from scratch, do not add knowledge, forgotten by subtraction. The group achieves immortality Lester no longer reincarnate, but transferring the consciousness to a "body container" in its more mature phase in terms of awareness and mental training. They have until midnight on the day designated for transfer to, because otherwise, "would be absorbed, trapped, caged in the brain of the host, unable to control anything, doomed to see the world through the eyes of another person" , as stated by Dr. Lester. That is, the arrest of Reincarnation, as it denounced by Gnosticism. While Craig, Maxine and Lotte want to move to mediation by a desire to see the world through the eyes of others, the group of Lester wants more than that, keeping intact the core of consciousness, jumping from one body to another achieving immortality and maintaining identity.

Credits:
  • original title: Being John Malkovich
  • Time: 01 hrs 52 min
  • year of release: 1999
  • studio: Propaganda Films
  • Distributor: USA Films / UIP
  • Director: Spike Jonze
  • Screenplay: Charlie Kaufman
  • production: Steve Golin, Vincent Landay, Sandy Stern and Michael Stipe

Lovely Bones: Evil Lurkes Who Violates The Order

Centered in the story of a girl who was murdered and observes her family and her killer "sky" (not exactly, but in a limbo between earth and heaven), the adaptation of the novel "Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold forget the intelligence and intricate story of the book and confines the experience of the sacred in the famous Hollywood fantasy-cliche of "break-the-order-and-return-to-order": you break the Order must be punished! This is the movie Lovely Bones, (2009)

As already discussed in previous posts, the experience called the Sacred understood as such by the mainstream media of today is in a kind of secular theology: an experience that would originate in the perception or intuitive sudden discovery that the individual had a connection with a " higher order, with a total cosmic or divine.

Discontinuous and marked for death, the truth would not be on individual experience, but in the settlement of any particular perspective on behalf of a totality ( "We are all one," the totalitarian slogan New Age).

From this perspective, such as Sacred Theology secularized have two "functions" in a violent way to adapt the individual to social wholes (order corporate, political, moral, etc.). And bring comfort and streamlining the individual pain and suffering resulting from this forced adaptation (to show individual that he is insignificant compared to the larger designs of the Cosmos).

As in the movie Rebel Without a Cause (1955) where the character of James Dean (Jim Stark) looks at the stars in the Planetarium and says he is always there for, to contemplate the immensity of the universe, to see how their problems are insignificant.

Similarly, Lovely Bones confined to the experience of the sacred experience of successive punishments for transgressions of the characters of the Order. And the movie follows the fantasy-cliche surprisingly rigid and schematic in the style of movies involving teenagers in horror or thriller genres. If not, see.

The construction of the characters of mother and grandmother of the protagonist who is murdered (respectively Abigail Salmon - Rachel Weiz - and Lynn - Susan Sarandon) are exemplary: we see Abigail in bed reading books by Camus and beatnik literature, while the grandmother drinks and smokes compulsively and encourages her granddaughter to have their first love experiences. Such transgressive behaviors deserve punishment: the murder of the daughter / granddaughter Susie Salmon disturbance and happiness of the family.

The sequence preceding the murder of Susie is exemplary. She dreams of the first kiss that will give life. She is in love (with the encouragement of her grandmother's liberal) by Ray (Reece Ritchie), man "mysterious" (in American movies just being a foreigner - he is English - to have an air of "mystery." The typical American xenophobia) . Breakdown of order and immediate punishment. In the next sequence she will be murdered by serial killer in the cornfield. Individual dreams must be slaughtered by the reality: one of the variations of the fantasy-cliche of "break-the-order-and-return-to-order".

Moreover, the cornfield is the flagship site of the narrative: there are the young lovers in search of their first sexual experiences. And there is also the serial killer, the evil lurking, ready for the punitive role of implementing the Order and the Totality.


While the transgressors are disappearing in the plot (the wife Abigail become depressed and leave home for self-exile as a worker in a rural farm and grandmother Lynn simply disappears in the last sequences), the characters more "right" or "focused" win space in the confrontation against evil, the serial killer. The victim's father Susie, Jack Salmon (Mark Wahlberg) decides to use his talent for detail (he is an accountant) and investigates the possible suspects and sister Susie, Lindsey, (the plot described as more realistic and pragmatic than Susie) is correct intuition of who is the killer and find the evidence to hand to the police. The rationality and pragmatism are necessary in the face of attitudes "fucking-crazy" that just attracted Evil

Surprisingly the same schedule of tours of the horror movies of teens called "espantomania" (Friday 13, Freedy Kruger etc..) 80s.

Meanwhile, in "heaven" or "limbo", attitudes offending Susie still being punished (eg, aggression and nearly suffered death by his father as caused by the insistence of Susie observe life on earth and nourish hatred for his killer). The end will be constrained by other girls victims of serial killer and adapted to the divine plan of a cosmic whole and perfect harmony.

In addition to poor adaptation of the original novel and the schematic of the primary script (good and evil without shadings), there is something more serious behind: the supposed experience of the Sacred sold by the mainstream media as the resignation of any individual or any dream before mysterious purposes of unity. The film Lovely Bones is nothing more than another example of the relentless ritual of liquidation of the individual on behalf of Universal.

Credits:

  • original title: The Lovely Bones
  • Country: USA, New Zealand, United Kingdom
  • Time: 02 hrs 15 min
  • year of release: 2009
  • official website: http://www.lovelybones.com/
  • Actors: Saoirse Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci
  • studio: WingNut Films / DreamWorks SKG / Film4 / Key Creatives
  • Distributor: DreamWorks SKG / Paramount Pictures
  • Director: Peter Jackson
  • Screenplay: Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson, based on the novel by Alice Sebold

terça-feira, dezembro 08, 2009

O Filme Gnóstico: uma introdução



A produção cinematográfica norte-americana recente (1995 a 2005) conta com diversos filmes onde é marcante a recorrência de elementos temáticos inspirados em narrativas míticas do Gnosticismo (conjunto de seitas sincréticas de religiões iniciatórias e escolas de conhecimento nos primeiros séculos da era cristã). Os temas incluem, freqüentemente, conspirações cósmicas, universos paralelos, amnésia e paranóia. Demonstra um interesse por uma ambivalente relação entre o sujeito e a realidade, consciência (especialmente alterada por estados de consciência iluminados) e revolta contra sistemas autoritários de controle. Filmes como Cidade das Sombras (Dark City, 1998), a Vida em Preto e Branco (Pleasantville, 1998), Show de Truman (Truman Show, 1998), Vanilla Sky (Vanilla Sky, 2001), entre outros, apresentam uma idéia geral de que o mundo que percebemos é uma ilusão criada por alguém que não nos ama e que a chave para revelar a ilusão e descobrir a realidade reside numa forma de autoconhecimento ou iluminação. Uma pista para descobrirmos essa conexão entre gnosticismo e cinema passa pela discussão entre misticismo e imaginário tecnológico. Fortemente conectado com o imaginário social deste final e início de novo século, a produção cinematográfica atual norte-americana refletiria um imaginário tecnológico que alguns autores definem como “gnosticismo tecnológico” ou “tecnognose”. As análises fílmicas que faremos nesse blog procurarão encontrar características gerais que apontem para uma especificidade do filme gnóstico dentro do campo cinematográfico.

Tecnologia do Blogger.

 
Design by Free WordPress Themes | Bloggerized by Lasantha - Premium Blogger Themes | Bluehost Review