A Brief Gnostic History of the Spontaneity in the Entertainment Industry (Part 1)

If the Entertainment Industry repeats the same cosmic drama described by the Gnostic mythology (the Demiurge imprisoning human beings in an attempt to draw us to the particles of light by moving a fallen cosmos from the beginning) we need to trace the same trajectory inside the media . Find ways to make a story of how entertainment tries to capture and retain the spontaneity of an instrumental.

In previous posts (see links below) addressed the issue of spontaneity in the entertainment industry by Gnostic point of view. Our thesis is that the quest for spontaneity by the entertainment industry to make it productive in the structures, clichés (giving "life" or "feeling" empty and inert forms that tend dangerously to entropy - the apathy of the public) reproduces a micro-scale cosmic drama described by the Gnostic mythology: the struggle of the Demiurge to imprison the human being to extract from it the particles of light that animate the ethereal forms from which the physical cosmos was built. Because it is an imperfect copy of the Fullness (Pleroma), from the moment that was "built" and not "originating", tends to inertia or entropy.

Well, it is now draw a short history of spontaneity in mass culture, trying to map out the stages and strategies by which the spontaneity of the public is properly represented in the products and

But before that, we must define what we mean by "spontaneity." For the Gnostic mythology is the way in which the particles of light (memories of our true origins not in this cosmos, but in the Pleroma) are manifested in daily life: happiness, good faith provision, brightness, vitality, confidence, etc.., Ie , feelings and dispositions that set in motion our lives not in an instrumental sense (in terms of goals, objectives, efficiency, or "positive thinking", as recommended by the literature of self-help). Rather, we take the spontaneity in the aspect of "game" and "playful."

By referring this concept to this world, immediate recall of children's play, where even spontaneity expresses itself freely. But we play the game and not in the sense that the adult does as "irresponsible happy" or "something not serious." Richard Sennett for the game is serious business:

"(...) Is the principle that leads the child to invest a lot of passion in a situation driven by impersonal rules and consider the expression in this situation as a matter of redoing and refine these rules to give pleasure and promote a greater sociability with other "(Sennett, Richard. The Decline of Public Man, S. Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1988, p. 384.)

In the game children invest a lot of passion in absolutely impersonal rules, create a fantasy world to create pleasure and sociability. Serious about the game not in the sense of seeking instrumental or tactical victory methodically trying to understand the rules to understand the mechanics of the game and never lose. In the game we accept the experience, whether good or bad, win or lose. The passion is the development of rules (where the longer the game more fun) and not the ultimate goal Unlike the adult experience denies hiding in structures or strategies that will keep you protected from the threat of the experiment (uncertainty, loss , etc..) Hidden in the cliche to escape the unpredictable and dangerous.

Entertainment and Spontaneity

Defined the notion of spontaneity, let's move on to the history of its relations with the entertainment.

For Neal Gabler in his book "Life: The Movie" as the entertainment industry and more than that, as a phenomenon that will structure the experience itself, appears in the U.S.. Like Swiss chocolate exports tulips and Holland, the U.S. will export entertainment.

Its origins are perhaps deeper in evangelical Protestantism, whose religious practice was in itself quite amusing: faithful taken by fits of catalepsy, convulsions, visions, explosions of laughter and singing, and sermons full of bizarre stories, reports of murders and deformities to that the faithful feel the bones themselves hope, conviction and guilt. These stories later massed in tabloids and popular literature, would be the extent of this religious phenomenon typically American.

Here, the entertainment is associated with sensations: the unusual, the bizarre, the unexpected. These spontaneous demonstrations of daily life are associated with the Fantastic, the Mystery. Parks and circuses of varieties that exposed human strains will be the basis of the archetypes and iconography of modern horror movies and suspense that will move the structures cliche these genres.

With the coming of photography, film and later TV, this potential sensational imagery and theatrical entertainment takes place technologically. In this first phase of visual and audiovisual means, when there was still a structured language for business, we have the presence of spontaneous yet the relationship "awkward" or "dysfunctional" man with new technology then.

For example, in photographs of the nineteenth century people seem to be more clumsy than the current photos of them still have not in mind the notion of posing and lighting. Indeed, most pictures were spontaneous than the present.

In the cinema there was still room to director-actor relationship is not codified by the pace of the assembly line. For example, in the autobiography of actress Mae Marsch she gives an account of instructions given by director DW Griffith in a scene in which she would represent fear and panic. A conventional director would say "Scream".

"Mr. Griffith, by contrast, asked me if I had ever felt in life fear or fright. Yes, I said. 'What did you do then,' asked me to follow. 'I started laughing,' I replied. He knew immediately what it was (...) I believe the hysterical laughter was far more expressive than the eyes or turning back the tears. "(Quoted by PROKOP, Dieter." The Working with Stereotypes: the films of DW Griffith "In: MARCONDES SON (ed.) Dieter Prokop. Colection Greats Social Scientists, New York: Attica, p.64.)

With the consolidation of the entertainment industry as from the early 30th and final adjustment of man and the new technology we are developing a language (structure-cliche) specific for each medium and genre, resulting in the increasing need for exploration of spontaneity from the public.


The first strategy was the creation of the Star System or the promotion of actors as "stars" (to the Gnostic view of the expression is not mere coincidence: it expresses the secret desire to catch the light, "star" shine, to put into motion the entertainment). The producers soon realized that the public recognize their favorite actors and gave them affectionate nicknames (Mary Pickford "Girl of clusters" - see photo opposite - Jane Harlow to "venus platinum). Soon these players turn into stars while exploring the public's fascination with the idiosyncrasies or spontaneous or unique features, turning them into gods of Olympus, that is, "Olympians."

Celebrities and the Vicious Cycle of the Entertainment Industry

The second strategy was the creation of "celebrities". The exposure of the stars becomes deeper when looking at them everyday scandals, foibles, unusual hobbies, everything that gives spontaneity to actors who already bored the public. Once the stars have realized that the mechanism producing the constant exposure in the media and were deliberately, through public relations or journalists, to produce events or events to achieve ever greater media spaces.

This will create a vicious cycle, a trap for the entertainment industry in the quest for spontaneity:

"The result was to transform society into a gigantic Heisenberg effect, in which the media were not reporting what people did, he was reporting what people did to get media attention. In other words, as the life was being lived increasingly to the media, this was increasingly covering itself and its impact on life "(Gable, Neal. Life, the Movie. São Paulo: Companhia das Letters, 1999, p. 97).

A celebrity is tautological, as defined in the 60 Daniel Boorstin in his seminal book The Image: a guide of pseudoevents in America ":" Celebrity is a person who is characterized by its reputation. " It is famous because it is well known!

In fact, celebrities, with their poses, like playing the hair, mouths with lips between open-etc., Will play the cliche imagery of cinema and advertising.

If the film explored the spontaneity through the Star System, the advertising will get the spontaneous eroticism, children and animals. When Marilyn Monroe, perhaps one of the first celebrities, exposed himself with his fri appeal to capture the attention of cameras and lenses, have replied faces and, once spontaneous repertoire of advertising imagery pin ups.

The entertainment industry creates a trap for itself, an unexpected side effect: every effort to capture the spontaneity of everyday situations in film and advertising (as in images of Norman Rockwell trying to capture snapshots of the routine life style on the covers of the U.S. " Saturday Evening Post ") resulted in a repertoire of iconography, true tactics to attract the attention of reporters, producers and promoteurs. And not just in the field of shallow celebrities. Political and economic events occurring in exaggerated tones to match the script of fictional dramas and attract the attention of the media. The terrorist events are those that best demonstrate this thesis.

The practice journalist more concerned with "language" than the fact demonstrates this: the reporter becomes a stage director, leading the interviewee or the fact to make it more "newsworthy", "telegenic" or "exciting".

As a result, the spontaneity disappears and the entertainment industry reaches dangerously out of boredom, inertia and loss of interest. It was necessary to renew the search strategies for new media types, situations, sensations and snapshots. But that is subject to the next post.

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• "Because We Know You Have Something Special", says the Demiurge
  

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"Because we know you have something special", says the Demiurge

The contest of children's television channel Discovery Kids is emblematic. The contest seeks new presenters for their programs. Your emergency and recruitment tone seems to denounce the secret needs of the entertainment industry: just as the Demiurge in the cosmic field, the Archons in the field of micro media seek spiritual light and energy of each of us to put into motion a flawed design and static.

The Gnostic mythological narratives see the man as an expatriate or a foreigner in a cosmos that is hostile to him, governed by a Demiurge who does not love him but that the traps inside his creation with a single objective: the power to imprison the man contains (Spirit or Light).

Originated from a Anthropos that fell in this material universe in time immemorial as tragic result of a cosmic battle between the realms of Light (Pleroma) and the Demiurge, the man is constantly seduced by the illusions created by the Archons materials.

The Archons, or "small regents" as described in the Gnostic narratives, are malicious angels created by the Demiurge to assist, through the arms of evil and deception, to keep the man trapped inside the circles of matter. They have the ability to dodge through religion, science or reason and the ability to seduce through the sensuality or the symbols of power.

All because the creation of the Demiurge is an incompleteness in the architecture of cosmic creation: it does not create the world directly, but only one model ethereal, lacking the energy for this building that the anime: the Spirit or Light He is looking for element that animates the material cosmos, the Light that is mixed with darkness. Originated in the realms of heights (the Pleroma), the mixture is light in darkness because the human being, unconsciously, the holds. Therefore, the Demiurge attempts to apprehend them to extract from it the element which was organized by the principles of the physical cosmos corrupted, complete the gap in its creation.

The media and the entertainment industry seem to play in this micro-macro cosmic incompleteness. As another tool of the Demiurge (after all, the media and entertainment industries are the perfect fusion between Religion and Science, Technology and Sorcery - or fetishism), it is pure form, cliche, stereotype, merchandise. It's just a template that requires something the anime, which put into motion: the energy, spontaneity, innocence, etc.. In other words, you need the particles of light, or what makes each of us unique, brilliant and spiritually connected to our ancestral origins, the Pleroma.

The slogan of the contest of children's channel Discovery Kids "because we know you have something special" is very suggestive and gives food for thought in these terms Gnostics. The tone of the event on Discovery Kids is convening and urgent: "We are looking for presenters like you." The name of the competition is enticing: "Join the contract Turn to Star."

More than seduce through the imaginary narcissistic-exhibitionistic-voyeuristic (become a "star"), the entertainment industry looking for different ways to recruit people who have touched the spiritual energy necessary to give life to the empty forms and static products cultural.

This spiritual energy or particle of light in each one of us is manifested in daily life by spontaneity, innocence and good faith, kindness, compassion, joy, devotion and integrity of purpose. Gnosis was the inner search for spiritual meaning of these daily manifestations of the particles of light that animate the spirit. Understand that through gnosis means confrontation with the physical cosmos in which we are imprisoned, since these energies transcend or may not be contained by the roles or social norms or policies.

But the whole process seductive entertainment industry is to convince us that this truth is already present in every one of us are not enough. You must turn in the media image. Just as for many parents the child is not enough owls only exists, but states that its existence to become in-picture (turn the child into advertising model, upload videos to websites or children eagerly waiting to appear on TV channels). It is indeed the manifestation that the entertainment industry need to channel these energies to enliven the cliches and stereotypes.

Many researchers in the line of Critical Theory have realized this perverse dynamic. For example, Theodor Adorno understood the dynamic between the standardized forms of cultural industries and spontaneity required to give motion. Mainly in their analysis of popular music, Adorno understood the tension between the potentially emancipatory standard (the leitmotif and melody in music) and elements potentially spiritual, or transcendent energy (the atonal, the counter-point, etc...) So much so that your final project (abbreviated by death), represented by the book "Negative Dialectics", would be to scrutinize the spontaneity present in the masses, beyond the static models of the cultural industry.

The German Dieter Prokop tried to continue this insight of Adorno on the discussion of "boredom and fascination in cultural products". This passage is very interesting reflection on our Gnostic thinking:

"Fascinating is a certain carefree independence in certain representations and actions of men and women singers of hits: a sincere pleasure to represent, a firmness, a contentment with himself, a failure, acts of self-representation demonstrated unwavering narcissistic in a way that arouses admiration and envy (PROKOP, Dieter. Dieter Prokop, Large Collection Social Scientists, New York: Attica, 1987, p. 150).

In summary, it is fascinating to see a star that we know, beforehand, be more of the same, but with elements of spontaneity and carefree innocence.

The contest of Discovery Kids is emblematic. Your emergency tone and seems to denounce the secret recruitment needs of the entertainment industry: just as the Demiurge in the cosmic field, the Archons in the field of micro media seek spiritual light and energy of each of us to put into motion a flawed design and static. Fascinated, we are seduced by the stars as if they were special people, chosen and anointed, not knowing that in each of us also have this "anima". However, we are led to believe that we are empty and dependent on that energy transmitted by the media, when in fact we have exactly the opposite.

The exploration of innocence and naivety

I believe one of the most accurate translations filmic reality is that in the film "Mad City" (1997) from director Costa Gavras. Known for movies with plots of strong political overtones in this movie she puts the media in question, but not only in the most immediate political aspect: it goes further, exploring metaphysical dimensions.

Sam Baily (John Travolta), desperate to have been fired from his job as a security guard, returns to his place of employment (Museum of Natural History) to try to enter into an agreement with her employer (the curator of the museum Mrs. Banks - Blythe Danner ). Intending to intimidate her, and Sam comes armed with a bag full of dynamite. Max Breckett (Dustin Hoffman - a journalist at a low after being punished by the TV network where he worked with the downgrade to a regional station) is in the museum when she accidentally Sam fires his gun hitting another security that comes staggering into the street. In response, Sam takes everyone hostage at the museum (children visiting the museum at the time and Mrs Banks). Max has a handy scoop that you can do it again to return to journalism's national broadcaster.

Since then, Max will do anything to drive the story to national impact, creating a media circus around the museum. Sam, a naive and common resident of a typical country town, finds himself enmeshed in a web of interests that has the media as the center of everything.

Why the media is interested in personal drama of Sam Bailey? At 35 years and without a job feels finished and no prospects. Hidden wife's job loss, trying to solve it yourself. Melancholy and impotent before the facts of life (and no study has not found intelligent or smart), sees in the media (personified by the "news of the boy," Max Breckett) the only way for an exit. Max says he is popular and friendly to the public. For Sam, Max becomes his personal agent. Think of a book on the history, a TV movie and even a show about fishing, "Sam's Fishing Corner." Like Max, Sam is betrayed by the game media. Sam is naive and spontaneous, raw material required in any media to show, then this inner essence to be corrupted by the script and protocols of the fictional script.

Max: why not study?
Sam: I had no money ... and it seems that was not very smart
Max: I did not study too ... could not afford
Sam: How is that done to be so smart?
Max: say thanks to my charm ... is something you have
Sam: charm?
Max: charm, personality
Sam: in this case could spark a television program?
Max: Why not? It is even famous!
Sam: yes, but famous in the wrong direction
Max: It does not matter in television. They know who he is.

The ingenuity and spontaneity of Sam is the media that seeks the Demiurge, which makes his telegenic drama. Max directs Sam to follow a script, or a kind of protocol, the media and public opinion expect at events like this assumes the character of Sam hijacker gets the sympathy of public opinion and to think of a future program on TV. As in the Gnostic mythology Demiurge creates the form but not the content of existence (in need of raw material to liven the human creation), just as the media needs to capture and exploit the spontaneous and naive to give movement to the cliche of his universe.

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Ad-Gnosis and Techgnosis: Two Shortcuts to Satori

Ad-Gnosticism (Gnosis + Advertising) and Tecnognose: two promises to spiritualize the cultural horizon. Spiritualization quick, painless, without contradictions or clashes. After the "here's the product. Buy it!", the ads say: "Here is the opportunity for spiritual renewal." Once again the spiritual energy must be captured to give movement to empty and inert forms of the entertainment industry.

Once Theodore Roszak in his work "From Satori to Silicon Valley" ironically summed up the motivation behind the mystical new computer technologies, "a shortcut to Satori" (Satori - Japanese Buddhist term for "enlightenment" achieved with effort doctrinal or disciplinary) .

Beyond the utilitarian or rational discourse of new technologies (efficiency, cost reduction and time efficiency etc..) Motivation mystical or Gnostic appears as a subtext: the possibility of an experience of overcoming limits tangible dwell time, transcend to cyberspace and leave the immobility of space and flesh. New technology would enable the experience of gnosis, but without asceticism, discipline or inner reform. The technology is the shortcut pure, atavistic anxiety faster for the species escape the physical cosmos. In previous posts (see related posts below) argue that Gnosticism is steeped in Kabbalistic principles in order to discard the material world itself, not redeem him, facing the meat and the very materiality as a golem, chaos, formless, something queadeve simply be discarded.

But another kind of technology on the horizon of culture technologies (and their practical application, engineering) spirit. Its origin is in the area of self-help and self-knowledge, secular forms of positive theology, that is, forms of self-deification: from techniques similar to computer technologies (interaction, simulation, network, resources, etc..), Being human self-knowledge (actually reprogram itself) to be free of bodily limitations and existential, becoming motivated, positive and winning. Adapting to the corporate world and business is more than making money. It is a spiritual journey of self-knowledge.

Here is another "shortcut to Satori": from sketch books and many courses based on Power Point handouts (a simplification of simplification) reached gnosis quickly and without wasting time. Again the Kabbalistic principle: we have nothing to learn from the memory of the flesh (the pain, trauma, suffering, etc.).. Should be discarded (or rather, deleted) as push a button on a computer keyboard.

Is associated with this area the latest in engineering spiritual: the Ad-Gnosis. By exploring the vast repertoire of archetypical collective unconscious of the species, Advertising will offer a shortcut to the immediate realization of desires and wishes of the collective unconscious, through products and materiality of images. What was is now symbolic material: more than buying the product, the fact desire it would have a spiritual experience.

The Origins of Ad-Gnosis

Advertising has long ceased to be guided by the principle of behavioral "here is the product. Now buy it! ". From the outset Advertising has been involved with one aspect of magic and fetishism. Karl Marx, the magnum opus "Das Kapital", already presented capitalism as a phantasmagoria of religion with the notion of commodity fetishism (instead of God, man begins to idolize and be dominated by money, capital and commodities, entities created by man himself). All the tradition of so-called "Critical Theory of Society" will identify this phenomenon in the cultural industry and the "Aesthetics of Merchandise" in advertising (old and new generation of the Frankfurt School - Adorno, Horkheimer, and Prokop Haug). Here, we still have that dimension "magic" or "mystique" still confined to the materiality of the product. It is as if the product had its own life to be embedded in it human qualities or magical transformation. If the man wants those qualities back to purchase the product. If man does not consume, it would be empty and purposeless.

Throughout the twentieth century the various tactics employed Advertising engineering spiritual behavioral techniques (behaviorism and subliminal tactics), psychological (motivation, reward, cognition, psychological needs, etc..) And psychoanalytic (oral compulsion and addiction, narcissism, voyeurism, eroticism, etc. ..) But we still have the psyche or subconscious tied to the existence of the product.

Cartelised economy and characterized by high concentration of companies in a few transnational groups, the products become increasingly similar in technology, image, function and use. Differentiation strategies become increasingly superficial, taking the product borders on the frivolous and superfluous. For example, toothpaste become identical in their composition and function. How to differentiate them to "warm" the market and simulate a competition? Through fantasy and features brand-hyperbolic ("fluorine garde", "pro-mint", "clean mint", "menthol," "Colgate Total 12", and so on). But the figures of rhetoric, although numerous, are finite and being depleted.

The Advertising must give a new qualitative leap: paradoxically make the product disappear in the ad, making it much less something to be acquired than to be experienced as an event, journey, discovery and personal renewal.

As in the past where the start of modern advertising originated in the effort to disconnect the reason for the purchase of the product of its usefulness (obliterate the value in use, making the consumer buy the product for its uselessness), now the Advertising must give a new qualitative leap: paradoxically make the product disappear in the ad, making it much less something to be acquired than to be experienced as an event, journey, discovery and personal renewal.

The first move for this jump was the emergence of the segmentation technique VALS (Values, Advertising and Life Style) devised by the American futurist Arnold Mitchell in the 70 and improved in 90 years. Besides the psychological typology, his great innovation was to expand the definition of consumption: consuming is not just buying but especially desired. Desired values and lifestyles, unattainable for most people, but adding value to brands. Explaining, the frustrated desire of the majority is just adding value to brands and lifestyles effectively consumed by a minority.

Brands producing events (marathons, competitions, bike rides etc.). With thousands of participants who only want, but do not have purchasing power to consume the products. But experience their desires, adding value to products restricted to few. The separation between the desire and the immediate acquisition of the product was the first step of the engineering spirit.

Ad-Gnosis: another shortcut to the Gnosis

But the technique still remains a tie VALS, though tenuous, between desire and purchase product. The frustration for non-use of the majority is what adds value to brands of minorities. Therefore, despite the values and lifestyles, the product is still there, in a horizon of potential consumption.


In Ad-Gnosis have the immateriality of the full product. Besides the values and lifestyles, something deeper, in spirit, must be mobilized: the archetypes. As symbols of the collective unconscious binders anxieties, doubts and deepest hopes of human kind, the Gnostic point of view would be a visible manifestation of the particles of light present in each. This spiritual energy or particle of light in each one of us is manifested in daily life by spontaneity, innocence and good faith, kindness, compassion, joy, devotion and integrity of purpose. The archetypes translate this élan in themes, types, narratives or symbols as the language of dreams, spiritual channel that magma (Freud called the id), "materializing it." The understanding and experience of the archetype would provide potentially gnosis and the possibility of transcendence and, consequently, the confrontation with the cosmos material.

But Ad-Gnosis is not transcendent, but immanent, does not understand or experience the archetype, but exploits it. The whole entertainment industry needs this energy to give life to the empty forms and inert that structure their products.

An example is the film's publicist mobile operator "Oi". Applying characterology archetypal Carol Pearson, the film deals with the archetypal "The Regular Guy" with the character of "The Linker" (see photo above). From the description given by the researcher,The Regular Guy is the one who wants to be in connection with others, being loved, wanted or in the translation of advertising, be popular. As Freud himself has observed about the psychology of the masses and the malaise of civilization, more than death, what man fears most is not being loved, being alone. This fear would create a trap that will be the basis of mass psychology: fear of loneliness leads to gregariousness, want to be part of the majority, to cancel individuality and critical thinking.

What would be the archetype of the Shadow, the film translates as positive publicity. Constrains the moment of truth of the archetype (love and concern for others, compassion and solidarity) in flattery and conformity. The energy of the archetype is instrumental to the goal of operating more obvious: to make enough connections to have more profits.

The subtext in the Ad-Gnosis is this: more than consume a product or service, the consumer is the possibility of renewal and spiritual enrichment. It is an event, journey, experience. The product "disappears or is shifted to the background to promise the consumer a shortcut to enrich spiritual gnosis.

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• Gnosticism Kabbalistic and Techgnosis: The Shortcut to Gnosis
• Ad-Gnosis: The Spiritual Engineering in Advertising
• "Because We Know You Have Something Special", says the Demiurge

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Why the Gnostic Movies are an American Trend?

The fact that the film be a Gnostic tendency eminently American is the result of a peculiar mix of religion and mysticism with origins in popular literary forms in that country since the eighteenth century Puritanism passing through periodic revivals of religion and mysticism as Mormons and Pentencostal at the turn of the nineteenth century to the techno-mysticism originated in the 60s.

In any discussion of cinema, when I explain the existence of the film Gnostic (the existence of a trend of films which feature is the recurrence of themes inspired by the mythical narratives of classical Gnosticism and its variants and eclecticism - alchemy, esotericism etc.). A question arises : why the overwhelming majority of films Gnostic comes from the American cinema and Hollywood? Actually, this question is contained two questions: first, why the United States and, secondly, how these narratives Gnostic, who have messages of rebellion and mistrust of the status quo, can reach the mainstream Hollywood? Synthesizing: why the United States alone we find this phenomenon of "gnosticism for masses"?

Answering these questions requires understanding the history of the broad genre of fantasy literature and the different destinations in Europe and the United States and with a complex series of migrations from one continent to another.

We understand that the first flowering of Gnosticism in modern times (in the fantasy literature that incorporates elements of the supernatural, the grotesque and nameless) was in the Romantic era between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe. This revival comes at a combination of speculation and pragmatism esoteric Gnostic esoteric in Romanticism. Figures such as William Blake and Percy Shelley drank in Gnostic sources, kabbalistic and alchemical, challenging the status quo. We understand how narrative of Romanticism as a revolt against the rise of rationalism in the eighteenth century.

In this period we find in Europe the second variant of fantasy literature: the Gothic. Its Victorian ghost stories may have been the first form of fictional literature to penetrate the popular culture.

In Europe, this great and romantic literature, especially in France and Germany, will serve as a vehicle for the advancement of artistic vanguards such as Surrealism and Expressionism. In cinematic terms correspond to the period and European Cult Movies Gnostics, as described by Erik Wilson ("Secret Cinema: Gnostic visions in film"). For him, Gnosticism European cinema has gone through two very different periods: the first car period we have movies that are "reactionaries warnings" against the Gnostic desire to transcend the subject (The Revenge of the Homunculus - Otto Rippert's, 1916 - on the tragic consequences an alchemical experiment unsuccessful; The Golem - Paul Wegener's, 1920 - showing the tragic results of Kabbalistic magic).

The gnostic themes return later, this time through film non-commercial or labeled as cults that endorse values that ancient heterodox films condemned. Blow Up (Antonioni, 1966) is an exploration of the Gnostic as culture consumed by appearances supplants reality. Confusing form and content through a narrative highly ambiguous and hallucinating that bothers both the film's characters as the audience, 8 ½ (Fellini, 1963) explores the Kabbalistic belief that a human ideal can be achieved by the device, the creation of Adam kinematic; Zardoz (John Boorman, 1974) a true gnostic fable where in a post-apocalyptic future, the protagonist attains enlightenment to discover that he believed in God (Zardoz) was in fact an artificial creation of an elite imperfect and decadent, and The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicholas Roeg, 1976) presents an alien who comes to Earth looking for water for his dying planet. Unable to fulfill its mission ends prisoner of a network of corruption in a corporate America. Different from old movies, these films Gnostic cults criticize the status quo, suggesting that postmodern culture is a desolate world of illusions that produces conformity.

The American Religion

Meanwhile, the United States, the fantastic and the supernatural can be found almost entirely in the popular cultural forms. It has its origins in the so-called "Providences" (Puritan anecdotal narrative forms that described the miracles that illustrate how the divine manifests itself in everyday life), stories about African conjures and bizarre facts and present scandals in tabloids, magazines and paperbacks. In a brief moment in the high North American literature (in literary period called the "American Renaissance" in the early nineteenth century) that the fantastic and grotesque amalgam of popular culture would provide inspiration for great writers like Poe, Dickson, Emerson and Hawthorne.

Victoria Nelson, describing the "strange story of the Fantastic U.S.," notes that the religious fervor and mystic suffers constant revivals:

"The Great Awakening in the mid-eighteenth century has been accompanied by at least three other embodiments according to Robert Fogel: the second at the turn of the nineteenth century, with religious and philosophical implications of Transcendentalism in high literature but also in the many manifestations of popular literature, including the Spiritualist movement, Theosophy and new religions and cults like the Mormons and the Gnostics "Christian Scientists" and "Shakers." The third Great Awakening, Fogel says, occurred between 1890 and 1930 and we are still in the middle of the quarter that began in the 1960s "(Nelson, Victoria. The Secret Life of Puppets. Havard University Press, 2001, pp. 76-7 ).

All this religious and mystical amalgam resulted in what Harold Bloom called "American Religion": Gnostic strain that originated in a combination of sulismo Baptist, Pentecostal and Mormismo advocating a kind of "self-deification" through a personal encounter with the Sacred.

"Joseph Smith describes these sacred novelistic adventures in the Book of Mormon, to produce, as John Brooke has observed a particular Americanization of theology Renaissance to join aspects of hermeticism, Gnosticism, alchemy and magic to produce a popular 'totally full' alternative to Christianity "(Nelson, Victoria. IDEM).

Robert Fogel noted as well, we're in the middle of the fourth awakening mystical religious American utopias originated in primitive and tribal acid rock and psychedelic '60s. A peculiar reading Zen-Taoist mysticism of nature, a revival of the myths of the Earth and the praise of their natural cycles, combined with a Christian socialism, communal myths and, paradoxically, combined with the push of transcendentalist hallucinogenic journeys and altered states of consciousness.

Associated with the slight movement of Gnosticism in science from the universities of Pinceton and Pasadena during World War II, the principle among physicists, cosmologists and biologists, then spread to other areas, mainly through the theory and cybernetics information, we have the appearance of a typical American phenomenon: the Tecnognosticismo. That is, the mystical belief technophiles and the possibility of transcendent experience and experience the Sacred through the development of communications technology and information. As Theodore Roszak said ironically, is the technology as "shortcut to Satori" technology as the quintessence of overcoming the human condition (finitude, contingency, mortality, physicality and existential restriction) without the need for discipline, meditation and asceticism.

Great Awakening in this room we have, finally, the meeting of the whole tradition of "American Religion" in the sense given by Harold Bloom, with the strength of the techno-industrial complex U.S. military.

Gnosticism for the Masses

Since the popularization of techgnostics technologies and radical change of all sensory and perceptual environment with everyday devices such as Internet, graphical interfaces, virtual reality etc.. we have a new sensitivity to religious and mystical. On the one hand, we have the personnel autodivinização search for the sacred replaced by technologies spiritual self-help (represented by different means of film and audiovisual productions), and secondly, the popularization of the myths of classical Gnosticism not only to make a critical reflection on the fate of man before the tecnognose (Truman Show and The Matrix as examples) how to address particular forms of gnosis which are distinguished from self-help (Stay, The Fountain etc...)

As we have seen in a previous post (click here to read), this fourth Great Awakening produced a split in the resurgence of Gnosticism in the twentieth century: on one hand the Kabbalistic Gnosticism (represented by the Faustian pursuit of technology as a faster way to search for the post -human and the absolute transcendence of the spirit and quick compared to the prison of the body) and on the other, the Alchemical Gnosticism (the belief that the matter should be redeemed and not simply overcome and that the termination of this technological vision is more a Faustian shape of the Demiurge imprison humans in the illusions of the material world).

Surprisingly, this locus has been the production thematization recent Hollywood movie. This observation leads us to one final question: what makes directors and producers of the film industry to have this sudden interest in Gnostic thematic universe, particularly the alchemical? Why are these mythical narratives of antiquity were stranded in the synopses, scripts and the tables of mainstream Hollywood film producers? Why Hollywood embrace this particular Gnostic view that questions technoscientific Gnosticism?

A clue to begin answering this question may lie in considerations of Boris Groys on a "metaphysical turn" of the recent Hollywood production: gods, demons, aliens and thinking machines encountering heroes driven mainly by the question of what can be hidden behind the perceptible reality. This theme would hide a metaphysical claim self-referential. Movies like Matrix or Truman Show thematize own media production. We consider the real heroes of these films as media critics.

"Hollywood, therefore, reacts to suspected manipulation aesthetics that it is addressed to reactivating a metaphysical suspicion even more ancient and profound - the suspicion that the world could be a noticeable film shot on a remote metahollywood. In this case, Hollywood films would be "more real" than reality, as it usually does not show nor the artificial character of its own or what is beyond him. The new Hollywood movie, instead, shall, to reflect on their own procedures, a new metaphysics that interprets the act of creation as a studio production. "(Groys, Boris." Gods Enslaved - a metaphysical twist of Hollywood, "In: More! Folha de Sao Paulo, 03.06.2001, p. 5.)

While the European cinema is concerned, as usual, with "Too Human", Hollywood entered the current phase metaphysical or self-referential. With the proximity of digital technology involved in the traditional film business by extinguishing its own medium (film), or eliminating its own specificity that distinguishes it before other media, perhaps this time Hollywood be giving an answer to that technoscience the attacks. Perhaps this is the trend towards the metaphysics of the movie business now is to bring to the screen the ancient Gnostic suspicion that the world perceived to be an illusion and that a "metahollywood" high tech is the new Demiurge denounce the scruples of technoscience Kabbalistic - the secret project of combining the film industry with new technologies.

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Dicionário de Comunicação apresenta o verbete "tecnognose"

A conjunção entre Gnosticismo e Ciência (a princípio na Cosmologia, passando pela Biologia e, mais tarde, concentrando-se na Teoria da Informação e nas novas tecnologias computacionais) tornou-se a verdadeira porta de entrada para as mitologias gnósticas no século XX. O verbete "tecnognose"apresentado pelo Dicionário de Comunicação da Editora Paulus lançado recentemente define este conceito, fundamental para compreendermos como o gnosticismo vai manifestar-se nos produtos audiovisuais e cinematográficos contemporâneos.

Reproduzimos abaixo o verbete apresentado pelo
Dicionário:

Tecnognose

(S.f.) # Etim.: Do grego téchne “arte”, “ofício” + do
grego gnôsis “conhecimento”, “sabedoria”.

O progresso tecnológico pode ser caracterizado unicamente pela necessidade instrumental de busca por soluções econômicas para o mundo dos negócios. Porém, paralelo a este discurso, encontramos outro de natureza diversa, isto é, de motivação mística ou espiritualista: onisciência, ubiqüidade, superação de limites pessoais, utopias (“estrada para o futuro”, “o futuro é agora”) e toda uma série de nominações transcendentalistas que, para muitos autores, apontam para uma secreta afinidade entre tecnologia computacional e pós-religiões tradicionais. New agers, cyberpunks, desenvolvedores de programas e demais tecnófilos parecem conceber o ciberespaço não apenas no restrito aspecto da racionalidade instrumental, mas como um espaço sagrado que traria imortalidade e onisciência numa fusão gnóstica entre o self e o divino reino da informação. Se a história da racionalidade ocidental é marcada pelo embate contra o mito, temos uma mudança de rumo inesperada: o misterioso e o mítico penetram no próprio discurso atual da ciência e da tecnologia. No cerne das narrativas atuais que defendem a supremacia da ciência e do poder sem limites da tecnologia, encontramos uma fala “parasitária” promovendo o mistério e o mí(s)tico: uma fala “gnóstica”. Esta afinidade entre gnose, tecnociência e cibercultura foi sugerida por diversos pesquisadores de diferentes linhas como Hermínio Martins e Erik Davis. Por Gnose nos referimos ao conjunto de seitas sincréticas combinando idéias cristãs, neoplatonismo e as religiões de mistérios pagãs que florescem nos primeiros tempos da difusão do Cristianismo (séculos II e III DC). A eliminação do corpo e a virtualização da subjetividade propiciados pelas novas tecnologias computacionais parece favorecer esta espécie de “religião da tecnologia”. Esta fala seria mais do que parasitária, ou seja, devido a determinadas circunstâncias sociais e culturais do século XX, o gnosticismo teria se tornado o verdadeiro imaginário tecnológicoä que redirecionou a história da tecnologia, fazendo-a ingressar na etapa atual das próteses e simulações. A afinidade entre gnosticismo e tecnologia presente nas ciberutopias atuais apontaria para aquilo que Heidegger já havia pressentido: a essência da tecnologia não é técnica, mas metafísica. Diversos autores, entre eles Raymond Ruyer e Theodore Roszak,
detectaram e mapearam a semente do misticismo nas comunidades científicas, sejam
acadêmicos ou tecnófilos. Ruyer afirma que este movimento gnóstico surge discretamente nos meios científicos das universidades de Princeton e Pasadena nos EUA durante a II Guerra Mundial. A princípio entre físicos, cosmólogos e biólogos para, em seguida, alastrar-se por outras áreas, principalmente através da Cibernética e Teoria da Informação. Já Roszak rastreia este mesmo movimento na formação do Vale do Silício na Califórnia e entre as comunidades de
tecnófilos que participaram da revolução do computador pessoal e da Internet. Todos eles, com forte influência dos movimentos contra-culturais da Costa Oeste dos EUA, fortemente influenciados por utopias gnósticas que, mais tarde, tornaram-se Ciberutopias.
Wilson Roberto Vieira Ferreira


MARCONDES FILHO, Ciro (ORG.) Dicionário de Comunicação. São Paulo: Paulus, 2009.

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Series Lost, Last Season: Trick of the Script or Archetypes Gnostics

Lost ends with fans divided: on one hand, those who felt betrayed by the writers of the series and the other, those who do not bothored with puzzles not explained by the series. But the interesting thing Lost is not in cartesian anxiety for solutions that could solve the script to the end, but the great symbolism and mythologies that arise precisely in those gaps in the narrative.

Of all the discussions on Internet forums and groups for fans of American television series Lost, opinions are divided roughly into two trends: the first saw the series as a great writers' scam: polar bears appear in rainforests , Egyptian hieroglyphics that appear in the ruins of an ancient civilization on the island, the Others who spoke in Latin, polar bases speaking in Portuguese, etc., all puzzles and numerous others were released without explanation in the plot. The final solution is indeed expected, that all were already dead (suspected flashfowards expanded with the sixth season), seemed a Deus Ex-Machina "(term for arbitrary, nonsensical or plausibility in the narrative, to resolve dead- found in scripts exit misguided).

The second argues that the trend should remain mysteries, they were part of the charm or the assumptions of the series Lost. The mysteries left without explanation just did emphasize that the riddle of the island is very old, as old as mankind itself, therefore, impossible to be explained in six seasons in a television series. Indeed, the denouement (or the final question from Jack: "We're going where?) Would be just the tip of the iceberg, the visible aspect of a cosmic story that goes beyond human comprehension. In summary, the mystery behind this enigmatic church where the protagonists of the series come together in the end, apparently a Catholic, but the stained glass windows (with the symbolism of all the main currents mystic-religious - Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Buddhism etc.. ), a particular church, the ecumenical character (see picture below).

Let's forget, so all the little mysteries and riddles posted throughout the seasons of the series (indeed, it is living the screen writers). Let us put aside our tendency cartesian want a screenplay to exhaust all the explanations and close in on itself. We will concentrate on major archetypes and symbolism works by the series: characters stranded on an island trying to escape, each with a past from which they also wanted to escape, to forget. All together synchronously on a flight that will not end. A crash will make them fall on an uncharted island somewhere in time and space. All (the island and their lives) in a sleep state.

We are dealing with an archetype of the Gnostic TRAVELER, altered state of consciousness that will enable the gnosis (lighting) through the state of the suspension (revocation of rational thought, something close to the mantra or meditation). Jacob, Desmond, Locke and in the end, Jack, were believers, renounced their rationales for engaging in repetitive mantras to "save the world" (push buttons, defending caves with lights etc.)..

In episode 16 (in my opinion the most important of the entire series because summarizes the genesis and comogonia Island), we have the strong symbolism of Gnostic Light and the cosmos that imprisons everyone. Children of a mother killed by the Demiurge (a woman who holds the secret of light that keeps the existence of the island) are trapped on the island. Her stepmother tries to keep them at all costs on the island saying that nothing exists outside it. Like the Gnostic mythology, the cosmos is one that imprisons us constructu consisting of empty forms set in motion by the particles of light present in every human being. When the stepmother has the mystery of the Island (Light confined in a cave that holds the existence of the Island) says: "This light is also within each one of us." Everything's brother Jacob wants is to "go home". He discovers that this island is not the place (like humans in the physical cosmos) and joins a group of "scientists" ("men who are concerned to know how things work") who want to steal that Light (open the "cork" which borders on the island at all).

Here begins a new archetypal symbolism explored by the series: Gnosticism vs. gnosticsimo cabalistic alchemy. As discussed in previous post (see below links to related posts), the Gnostic narratives symbolize this anxiety in human flesh to transcend and overcome physical limitations and existential spirit. Two solutions are presented: on one side of techno Kabbalistic link (the "tecnognose") represented by the series Dharma Project and manipulative claims of his brother Jacob and antagonist (the "black smoke") to escape the island from the moment that able to sink it (erasing the Light of the "heart of the Island"). The past has to be simply discarded, forgotten. The flesh, the physical existence, it should simply be ignored and discarded, with nothing to learn from your memory (pain, suffering, etc.)..

On the other hand, the transcendent alchemy: Jack in the end restores the Light on the Island, shortly before his death. Simultaneously, in flashfoward, revealed by his father the truth: they all died (each time) and met unconsciously that kind of parallel existence (or limbo). Each one has lived the most important period of his life on the island, all together. Thus, as explained by Jack's parents, all are there together, living in that limbo, to remember and then forget. They must understand the past (forgive each other, for example, as it did with Hugo Linus) to proceed forward, overcoming and continuing in their spiritual journeys.

As in alchemy where the matter should be redeemed and not simply discarded in Lost are all in a suspended state waiting for the moment of enlightenment (gnosis) that, as we have seen, appeared at times as intuitive flashes, deja-vus. The illumination came from the redemption (understanding of what happened on the island). The mere destruction of that island, as desired by the "black smoke" no, would provide this understanding.

Summarizing: the penultimate and final episodes of last season for at least managed to tie loose fragments of Gnostic elements throughout the narrative (multifaceted reality, reality seen as a constructu, suspension, paranoia, confusion between reality and psychic projection etc...)

Therefore, the interesting Lost in anxiety is not the Cartesian solutions that could solve the screenplay to the end, but the great symbolism and mythologies that arise precisely in those gaps in the narrative.

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Ad-Gnosis: The Spiritual Engineering in Advertising

After the advertising reaching the subconscious and behavior with behavioral and subliminal techiniques, and unconscious with the psychoanalytic approaches, we are now the apex with a true spiritual engineering: the "Ad-Gnosis" (Advertising + Gnosis). In addition to the behavior and unconscious, the next target is the very spirit in archetypal approaches increasingly sophisticated in Advertising.

The idea of this post originated in a question raised by a student in the class creenplay Structure in the course of Publicity and Propaganda Universidade Anhembi Morumbi. We were discussing the use of archetypes in the scripts of several advertising films we review. Where, then, stop the movie from mobile operator "Oi" titled "Fashion". The film compared the fashion of old (who squeezed or restricted in corsets, bodices, etc..) With the current (which cherishes freedom of movement and choice). At the end of the film, the slogan "Freedom is a fashion statement." The issue raised is the slogan would be a contradiction: but being fashionable is to follow the trend of the majority, so there is no freedom. Immediately came to my mind the "Newspeak" language created by Big Brother in George Orwell's 1984 dystopia where contradictions were emptied in a banal language ("war is peace," and so forth). But when discussing archetypes, the issue is more complex than the discussion on plans semantic field of linguistics.

The film's publicist Oi worked with the archetype of the explorer, focusing on the aspect of his Shadow: the fear of being arrested, confined, limited the possibilities to learn and enjoy new experiences, being alienated and disconnected from others. That is, a kind of atavistic desire (transcend, move beyond etc.) Translated by cellular telephone service, and mainly confined in an adversarial slogan, where the yearning for freedom runs out on the immanence of fashion.

But there is a deeper aspect: a static economic system and cartelized, where products are increasingly similar, the only way to inject energy and élan in the system is through the trapping of the most spontaneous of individuals - Light and Spirit translated by archetypes exploited by advertising. It's what we call "Ad-gnosis."

Cartelization of the archetypes

Since the crash of the New York Stock Exchange in 1929 (where the capitalist world economy was almost down the drain) there is a tendency for an increasing monopolization and cartelization of the broad areas of the economy. The price war of a competitive economy (deep reason of the crash of 1929) was replaced by control of prices and demand (the desire for consumption) through cartelization and Publicity. In this new scenario, the products become progressively more and more identical: the management practices, production processes and technology are becoming increasingly similar among firms inside a cartel or inserted into gigantic transnational groups.

The differentiation between the products becomes a threat to the momentum of inertia of the consumer market. Successive strategies are being employed by advertising in order to simulate differences and competition. Of testimony linking celebrities Hollywood star system products, through the symbolic associations of status and prestige, until, in the '50s and '60s, to the tactics of subliminal inspiration and even psychotherapy (exploring compulsive, impulse, vicious and psychological dependence) increasingly Advertising has been perfecting a kind of engineering spirit. With Globalization and the radicalization of the concentration of firms in less transnational groups, the tactics of the differences of simulation products on the market necessarily need to become much more sophisticated in risk of all the imagery of consumption (sophistication, competition, technological innovation infinite and satisfaction) between a state of inertia. After reaching the subconscious behavior and behavioral techniques and subliminal, unconscious and with the psychoanalytic approaches, we now have the apex with a true spiritual engineering: the "Ad-Gnosis" (Advertising + Gnosis). In addition to the behavior and unconscious, the next target is the very spirit in archetypal approaches increasingly sophisticated in Advertising.


We can identify the origins of the development of engineering in the creation of deep technical VALS (Values, Advertising and Life Style) segmentation, developed in the late '70s by the American futurist Arnold Mitchell and finally improved in early 1990. The method was based on market segmentation by psychological profiles: individuals would be less motivated by individualistic or behavioral factors and more by ideals, values and lifestyles that could be classified into eight types: Innovators, Survivors, Believers, Thinkers, Strivers, Experiencers and Makers. This guided the publicity seeking "value-added" products such as philosophies, missions, goals, etc.. and no more "hard" style of the imagery of status and prestige.

But it just was not enough. It was necessary to achieve a more "mystical" or "magical" more in tune with the times "New Age" in which we live.

Carol Pearson, PhD in Psychology and Professor of Leadership Studies at Maryland University in the U.S. will find, from the studies of archetypal symbolism of the psychoanalyst Karl G. Jung, twelve models of unconscious symbolism, she said, motivate the human species: Innocent, Explorer, Sage, Hero, Outlaw, Magician, Regular Guy, Lover, Jester, Caregiver, Creator, Ruler. Initially aimed to serve as a tool for organizational engineering tactics, comes to the world of marketing and advertising concepts as guiding screenplays and video advertising as a strategy of creating the image of brands.

In their book "Awakening the Heroes Within: Twelve Archetypes That Help Us Find Ourselves and Transform Our World" (Harper SanFranc bait, 1991), "Magic At Work: Camelot, Creative Leadership and Everyday Miracles" (Doubleday, 1995), "The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through The Power of Archetypes "(McGraw-Hill, 2001)," Organization Mapping the Psyche: A Jungian Theory of Organizational Dynamics and Change "(CAPT: Center for Applications of Psychological Type, 2003) is clear that human motivation is the primary concern of organizations, business, marketing and advertising.

In Jung's archetypes are symbols of the collective unconscious, symbols updated by various means (mysticism, religion, legends, myths, until you reach the most mystical of contemporary advertising) where are clumped aspirations, hopes and great metaphysical and existential questions of humankind. Experiencing an archetype is to tune in the network of unconscious meaning, even for brief flashes, like a deja-vu.

In Gnostic terms, archetypes are the manifestations of these particles of light in each one of us that connects us to our true spiritual origins (the process of gnosis), envisaging the possibility of transcendence of the material cosmos constrains.

In Ad-Gnosis these particles of light or spirit is translated as "motivation" as an energy source to be merged and imprisoned in narratives and images that set into motion the imagination of the consumer who is living with the threat of stagnation and entropy: the discovery that in the end, all products are equivalent and that the differences are merely of signs or imagery.

For example, if the advertising films about soap powder housewives are represented by the same cliche characterology (thin, brunette, long hair, around 30 years and even look to suit the child that appears unclean feet to the head etc. .), the archetype is what will capture the "motivation" of the consumer, injecting spontaneity and energy design in static and empty.

• Related Posts: "Because We Know You Have Something Special", says the Demiurge

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The Joker and The Synchromysticism

"I warned him" said Jack Nicholson after the death of Heath Ledger, the interpreter of the Joker in The Dark Knight (2008). What I meant Nicholson with this warning? Like the archetypal psychopath, the Joker summarize not only as the thought-forms become autonomous and powerful current in pop culture but also, as Hollywood becomes the main catalyst of these psychic energies.

The post below appeared in the blog of Jason Horsley Aeolus Inc. In this post, we have a practical example of analysis of what he calls "Synchromysticism": a proposal for analyzing not only the product film, but film production and audiences by reference of Schizophrenia, Shamanism, the development of archetypes (Jung) and Theosophical concepts like the "thought-form" of Blavatsky and Leadbeater. This post is the first part of its analysis surrounding the death of actor Heath Ledger and the last character who performed it, the Joker from Batman film series. For Horsley, the Joker is the archetypal psychopath, a Thought Form capable of owning contemporary actors and audiences, most of the autonomous entities manipulated by the Hollywood industry. Horsley dangerously transits between conspiracy theories and mysticism as a reference tool to understand phenomena of communication today.

However, it is worth following his arguments critically. At least, it can be fun. Soon we will publish the second part of the analysis Horsley about Heath Ledger and the Joker:

The Hollywood Entity Smogasbord

After Heath Ledger’s death, Jack Nicholson made the cryptic remark: “I warned him.”

What exactly did Nicholson warn Ledger about? It seems likely, given the context, that Nicholson was referring to the potentially deranging effects of playing a psychopath with such extreme qualities as the Joker. The Joker is not merely a psychopath but an archetypal psychopath: in the ranks of popular cultural thought-forms or 20th century tulpas, he is practically a god. (Research for the first Batman movie claimed that the bat insignia was the second most recognizable symbol to kids, after the smiley face.)

If I am right in presenting the idea that fictional creations become semi-autonomous, even semi-conscious, entities within the Imaginal realms, via the psychic energy we give to them (an idea Neil Gaiman plays with in Sandman, and Alan Moore with Promethea), then presumably, the more popular a character becomes—the more narratives are spun around it—the “stronger,” the more powerful and autonomous, the tulpa would become? Think of Father Christmas or Jesus Christ. Whatever odd mix of myth, legend, and historical fact lies behind these characters, they are profoundly real in their effects, and not just in our psyches but through our actions. Parents even pretend to be Santa to maintain the illusion.

In The Manson Secret, Peter Levenda touches on the parallels between method acting (the Stanislavsky method) and the creation of “alters” via mind control programming—in other words, between the assumption of roles as a performer, and the fragmentation of the psyche as seen in multiple personality disorder, etc. In the old days, however—and even today in more shamanic cultures—what we term schizophrenia and “MPD” would more likely be understood as a kind of entity-possession. When trauma—either induced via abuse or other forms of “handling” or self-induced via drugs, magikal rituals, or acting techniques—creates an opening or fracture in the psyche, external forces can enter in and assume control of that psyche. One could also say that, by tapping into the unconscious mind, suppressed and disowned aspects of the psyche—both daimonic and demonic—emerge and take over consciousness. The shamanic view sees the forces as external and demonic, the psychological view sees them as internal, pertaining to the psyche. But the basic description is the same, as is the end result: loss of control, madness, despair, or, in rare cases, initiation and illumination, and maybe an Oscar-winning performance!

I already described how actors might be chosen as vessels or conduits—“strange attractors”—by which psychic energy could be drawn off and redirected toward the creation of thought-forms. These thought-forms would not be under the control of the actor, much less the audience (whose psychic energy they are made up of), but rather that of a third, unseen element: a power, let’s say, hidden behind the scenes. Thus these thought-forms would seem to be autonomous, since they are being directed by an outside intelligence independent of their apparent source. Something similar may occur in the cases of MPD and indeed, of actors submersing themselves in a role. It almost indubitably does occur in the case of mind control victims.

When an “alter”—a fragmented aspect of the psyche that has been compartmentalized and become independent—is created, it is effectively cut off from the controlling intelligence of the psyche. Since nature abhors a vacuum, something is inevitably drawn to fill the space, to take hold of the disowned fragment, and to steer and direct it, perhaps even to inhabit it. So in behavioral modification, a subject’s fragment “alter” is programmed and trained as a spy, assassin or sex slave, and this becomes its whole identity and function. Essentially it is then acting upon—as an embodiment of—the will of another, external agency. The same can be said, in religious terms, when demons possess a body and “oust” its soul: a person becomes split into two or more personalities, one of which remains unconscious of the other, and so they begin to act out their “Shadow” in aberrational ways. We say of such a person that they are “possessed,” or are “not themselves,” or simply that they are “out to lunch.” Shamanically speaking, entities (which may themselves be thought-forms created by the person, or by others connected to them, such as “ghosts,” “ancestors,” and suchlike) await such an opportunity to assume control of a person’s psyche and inhabit their body. This can occur in dramatic ways—crimes of passion, mental breakdown, etc—or in subtler but far more prevalent ways, such as compulsive behavior, substance addiction, sexual abuse, and suchlike.

Of all the feeding grounds we might imagine for entities, it’s hard to conceive of a richer, more abundant and varied one than that of Hollywood—where compulsive and extreme behavior is the norm, and where the creation and assumption of alternate personalities and the weaving and pursuing of fake narratives—the deliberate disassociation from reality—is the nature of the business.

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Faith and Gnosis in "The Road"

The Road (2009) is a film post-apocalyptic genre that you never saw. Unlike films with the same theme as The Book of Eli (2010), the faith of the protagonists is not in God or sacred books. Faith lost must be sought in the "heart fire", the Gnostic quest for remembrance of what was lost and that is not in this world, but somewhere in the idyllic "South". Warning spoilers in this post.

The world as we know it was destroyed by some unspecified apocalyptic event. The result is the progressive death of the planet: With the exception of humans, animals and plant kingdom are dying in the midst of earthquakes and a persistent rain falling in a world ever more gray and cold. Without food, groups are organized into gangs in search of fuel and other human beings to be cannibalized. Those who have not resorted to suicide struggling not to be caught by these gangs and survive without eating their peers.

A man (Viggo Mortensen) is his only son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) for the company in this arid land. The mother (Charlize Theron) is killed, and the only hope of surviving the winter is eternal cross the country towards the coast and head south. Along its path will face the constant threat of gangs and cannibals the dangers of a planet that is dying.

This plot seems familiar: another post-apocalyptic movie in the line of Mad Max or the recent The Book of Eli (aka, as the Americans like to destroy your country in the movies!). But his narrative glacial and precise, with a constant atmosphere of terror by recurrent signs of widespread cannibalism, makes "The Road" a movie post-apocalyptic as ever seen.

But mostly, the theme of hope and faith is approached by a Gnostic bias, which makes it a different movie for the genre. The film is an adaptation of the book "The Road" (winner of the Pulitzer Prize) from mahout McCarthy whose work seems to have great influence of Gnosticism in the book like Blood Meridian (his film adaptation is planned for 2011), a western that, according to Leo Gaugherty , "is a gnostic tragedy, a rare union of ideology with the tragedy Hellenistic Gnostic" ("Gravers False and True: Blood Meridian the Gnostic Tragedy" Southern Quarterly 30, No. 4, Summer 1992, pages 122-133).

On The Road father and son (important detail, the film has no character name) struggle to find safe places and keep warm. His father fiercely protects her son, and a disturbing scene shows him how to kill if necessary - presumably if he is captured by cannibals and can not escape. But he also tells his son that they are "carrying the fire", a phrase that is repeated several times in the film. This "fire" is both the literal fire to cook food and keep them warm, but also the hope that they have for humanity. More than that, is a Gnostic symbolism.

As the man talks about his son: "If he is not the word of God God never spoke." The father and son must carry a particle of light in the heart, particle, according to the Gnostic mythology, is reminiscent of our true home in the Pleroma. Beings who are exiles in a cosmos in the fall, we should keep this particle (gnosis) that we bring back to our true origins.

Constantly in the movie his son is concerned with how to distinguish good from evil men. As in Blood Meridian, here the antagonism Manique and Zoroaster: the division between "good guys and bad guys" is not one of Manichaeism Hollywood, but the fundamental cosmic conflict over the ownership of these particles of Light Avoid being cannibalized by "Bad Guys" is to prevent the Demiurge (craftsman of that post-apocalyptic world.) take possession of the particles that give a life to a world in decline.

Therefore, the way the topic of faith and hope are addressed by the protagonists is typically Gnostic. Unlike the movie "Book of Eli" where faith is given by the words of the Bible memorized by the protagonist (antagonist fight to take possession of the holy book, too, remember his words), here faith is approached as a gnosis, a dipping process which seeks to close in the heart of light that the particle will be
the benchmark for discerning between Good and Evil Throughout the film there are several religious references (Verse of the biblical book of Jeremiah - "Behold the Valley massacre "- graffiti on a bridge in ruins, the protagonists take shelter in a church also in ruins, like poles tilted crosses were stuck on land razed etc.).. Religion is placed as an additional detail of a scenario in ruins. It remains the protagonists an intimate search. No more faith in God, but only in yourself. It is the typical path of Gnosis.

Unlike his father who was molded by years of desperation became pitiless, fierce and distrustful of anyone who crosses the path, the son, is still rather innocent and naive, but aware of the evils of the world. Each dialogue cynical view of the helpless father is contrasted by the hope of finding the child and may still exist within all people.

Curious in the film is that no character be named. This has a double meaning in the narrative. On one hand, in a post-apocalyptic world names are useless, the men become animals like cattle herd for the cannibals. Second, in this circumstance actions speak more acts that names or social roles that may result. The name is not a person and is not necessary for you to connect with them as something "real." Our actions are what defines who we are and says, not our names. More Gnostic theme, and perhaps the main theme of the film: more important than names and social roles are the actions and the heart that will indicate whether you keep the particle of light lit inside. In one scene, a man asks if Mortensen is a doctor, he replies: "I am nothing."

After reaching the coast and the father dies, the boy will find a family that will adopt. The final dialogue between them is the synthesis of the Gnostic message contained in the film: the human beings as the exiles who have a recollection of his true origin. The wife says to the boy: "I am so happy to see him. Did you know that we have followed you? I have seen with your father. We are very lucky. We were very worried about you. Now we do not have to worry about anything else. "

The boy not only found in the intimate human kindness. This line of dialogue is emblematic of a deeper meaning close Gnostic: anthropos as it declined for the cosmos dominated by a Demiurge that imprisons us, we are observed by Sophia (a character who talks to the child is female) accompanying our progress and falls, waiting for the memory of what was lost in the wake.

Symbolism of Water and Cardinal Points

In "The Road" have different symbolism and iconography, but two stand out in symbolism fundamental to the narrative: the beach (or "coast" as referred to in the film) and the south cardinal point

The final important dialogue, as his father's death, occur on the beach. In our research we can see that the water element is recurrent in Gnostic movies: does not appear as a mere ornament or geographical context. Participates as an active element of signification, as part of decisive changes in the actions of players or interpretation of the story.

"The symbolic significance of water can be reduced to three dominant themes: source of life, a means of purification, regenerescência center. These three themes are in the oldest traditions and form the most varied combinations imaginary "(CHEVALIER, Jean and GHEEBRANT, Alain. Dictionary of Symbols, José Olympio Editora, 2009, p.15).

On the beach, the son sees his father's death (symbolically marking the death of the bonds of anthropos, the son, with the physical cosmos that traps) and the final encounter with Sophia ("now we do not have to worry about anything else," he says) .

The survival strategy of the players is to go to the coast and then sail to the South The cardinal points have an elaborate symbolism in various cultures. Many beliefs about the origin of life, the abode of the gods and the dead, the cyclical etc. organized around the axes cross-shaped cross. Analogical thinking for the opposition creates a bond: the South is opposed to the North but the South leads the North. This principle of discontinuity is the basis of cyclical processes of chain initiation of death and rebirth. For many esoteric traditions each direction is associated with an angelic being.

The South is associated with the angel Mikael, who helps the pilgrim to travel safely. Like the protagonists of "The Road" looking at the journey through the devastated lands lost faith and flame (gnosis) in the depths of human nature.

Credits:

• Original title: The Road
• Length: 112 min.
• Type: Feature film / Color
• Distributor: Paris Filmes
• Producer: Dimension Films, 2929 Productions, Nick Wechsler Productions, Chockstone Pictures, Road Rebel
• Release year: 2009
• Country: USA
• Director: John Hillcoat
• Screenwriter: Cormac McCarthy, Joe Penhall
• Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce, Molly Parker, Michael K. Williams, Garret Dillahunt, Charlize Theron, Bob Jennings, Agnes Herrmann, Buddy Sosthand, Kirk Brown, Brenna Roth, Jack Erdi, David August Lindauer

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Conspiracies, Schizophrenia, Synchromysticism ... Some Hypotheses to Explain the Gnostic Film

Anywhere where I expose my research on the film Gnostic insistent question arises: Hollywood is turning to Gnosticism? Screenwriters, directors and producers gnostics are invading the American film industry? Then everything could be a big conspiracy? The answers are not so simplistic. Even more, we know that the "revival" today is just another throughout history (the alchemists in the Middle Ages, the Neo-Platonism in the Renaissance, Gothic and Romantic literature in the eighteenth century etc.).

To help answer these questions, we will try to do a mapping of the main hypotheses about why the current convergence between movies and Gnosticism:

1 - Conspiracy Theory: This event thrives mainly on the Internet. Gnosticism is associated with a movement called "Satanism" or "Luciferianism" who was behind the globalization or the "New World Order" (NWO). The main goal of globalization is not political and not economic. This was all just a means to achieve the larger goal: the proliferation of neo-paganism with the destruction of the three great monotheistic religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Because the Gnosticsmo face the monotheistic God as a Demiurge Gnosticism and oppose forms of religious revelation (as opposed to faith in God, Gnosticism proposed faith in yourself) are evidence of its purposes Satanists. In this struggle for hearts and minds would be in the vanguard of this Hollywood giant conspiracy to submit on movie screens worldwide protagonists who seek more faith in themselves than in God. Writers, Directors and Producers would be part of this conspiracy that would aim to build the road within the philosophical and mystical which covers the New World Order. This hypothesis is primarily evangelical and fundamentalist Christian groups in the U.S., the same groups that defend the civilian weapons as a way for people to organize militias to counter the NWO.

If this hypothesis first part of a mistaken understanding of Gnosticism (secret societies, neo-paganism, cosmos without God, nihilism, atheism, etc.) on the other, it seems that movies Gnostics take some advantage of these delusional conspiracies: embedded in their narratives References of these urban legends as in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind when Joel (Jim Carey) is an impulse to take the train to Montauk and missing work. Why Montauk? It is a subtle reference to the famous conspiracy theory of the Montauk Project, whose content has to do with the very theme of the movie. The Montauk Project was a secret project undertaken by U.S. military intelligence experience with psychological intervention through drugs and electronic equipment for espionage and interrogation.

2 - Sincromisticismo: hypothesis proposed by Jason Horsley (philosopher and critic of American cinema), especially in his book "Secret Life of Movies: Schizophrenic and Shamanic Journeys in American Cinema. London: McFarland, 2009. " For him, cinema is the way people experience it the other three areas of experience that society alienates us: the search for religious purposes or "signs", the shamanic or animistic way of dealing with the Nature and schizophrenic inability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Both the experience of producing a film or watch it already is schizophrenic, on the assumption that the social structure itself is already schizoid, although not so admit. The recurring themes of the films Gnostics (loss of memory, identity, the boundaries between reality and fantasy, sanity and delusion, paranoia, etc.) would be symptoms of a condition that the company concealed and movies would be one way to experience them. By offering a "shamanic reality" (be in two places at once), the film would become the most schizoid of all media. In other words, to communicate with a schizophrenic society, writers and directors need to resort to a language also schizoid. What we think, then, the 3D movie experience?

The paranoia and schizophrenia, the raw material of films not only Gnostics (as, for example, "Fight Club", "Memento" and the recent "Shutter Island"), but the actual Gnosticism (the representation of the human condition such as an exile in a hostile cosmos) would be the very way to communicate with a company also schizoid. Horsley does not deal with schizophrenia as a disease that needs to be treated in the psychiatric sense. The Sincromisticismo asserts that the search itself by religious revelation is schizophrenic and that the company, denying that his own nature and confine the schizophrenic experience in psychiatry, denies people the experience "shamanic" the sacred. Therefore, the films would not be the means by which people want to escape reality through myth, but to experience it even though the company denies.

3 - The Gnostic film as a reflection of a historical moment - the hypothesis of the ideas of French historian Marc Ferro. For him every film is a document because it would represent the imaginary of a given society or historical period:

"The imagery is both history and history, but the cinema, especially fiction films, opens a great way toward the fields of psychosocial history ever achieved by the analysis of the documents" (FERRO, Marc. História.São Film and Paul: Peace and Terra, 1992, p.12).

No matter if the film refers to an immediate or remote past, since it always goes beyond its content. So if there is a connection between cinema and society, that is, if the film can be considered a repository of contemporary social thought and now know that this imagery is strongly marked by a technological development driven by techno-utopian nature of Gnostic, perhaps can understand why the recurrence of elements of gnosticism in the cinema. Strongly connected with the social imaginary of the end and beginning of new century, the film industry today, particularly the U.S., reflects not only the technological vision transcendentalist (Tecnognosticismo) and also existential issues, ethical and spiritual imagery resulting from such .

4 - Gnosticism as attitude and "psychological ambience." This hypothesis can be summarized in the phrase of Stephan Hoeller (writer, researcher, scholar and religious leader): "Every good artist is half gnostic." For him, the constant rebirth of Gnosticism throughout modern history (Gothic and Romantic literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, modern and avant-garde art, in actuality, the Hollywood cinema) runs under the systematization and transmission of the Gnostic philosophy. Rather, Gnosticism historically been characterized by syncretism, obscure origins and transmission trouble for the disappearance of key documents and texts. For Hoeller, the strength of Gnosticism refers to:

"A certain attitude of mind, a psychological ambience (...) a certain kind of soul is by its very nature, Gnostic. Whatever their geographical environment, cultural or spiritual this inevitably gravitates to a Gnostic worldview. When that ideological bias is the stimulus of some element of transmission Gnostic, is bound to emerge a rebirth. "(HOELLER, Stephen. Gnosticism: occult tradition. RJ: New Age, 2005, p. 155-156).

Be a writer, artist or researcher, the very critical attitude towards society already produce a "psychological ambience" provides for the reappearance of themes or archetypes of Gnosticism. On this view, writers like Philip K. Dick or mahout McCarthy (whose works attract the interest of writer / producers in recent American cinema) are Gnostics, although they have not realized it. The critical attitude towards the world to describe dark aspects of society and politics by inserting them into cosmic conspiracy goes far beyond the traditional historical materialist critique: outlines a critique of metaphysical. This "psychological ambience" would be given by Conspiracy Beliefs about secret societies that dominate the world originated in the mentality of a society atomized, passive in the face of an incomprehensible complexity of technology that dominates everyday life. That would be the environment from time to time to setup to create conditions for the recurrence of elements of Gnosticism.

These are the four main lines of assumptions that underlie current research on Cinema and Gnosticism. Excluding the first case (with obvious mark of the political right and religious fundamentalism), the other may be different aspects of one reality. Seems not mutually exclusive but complement each other.

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