Thursday, April 26, 2012

The Great Hare


[The] 'Great Hare' or 'chimerical beast,' as one of the missionaries called it, figured centrally in the religion of the geographically widespread Algonquin tribes, including the Powhatans of Virginia, the Lenni Lenape of the Delaware, various tribes of New England, as well as western tribes and the Ottawa of the far north. In another early recorded testimony, as reported by one of the first French missionaries to arrive, the Ottawa were said to have been formed by three families, the first that of the Great Hare who, after forming the earth was inspired by a spider to invent fishing nets, and who set forth burial rights for his descendents. Other early and subsequent accounts expanded upon the Great Hare's role as both principal deity and culture hero, crediting him with the creation of habitable land from a grain of sand taken from the bottom of the ocean; the invention of picture-writing and of many charms and signs used in the hunt (and even of originally sorting game from non-game species), as well as founding the culturally important 'medicine society' or Meda.

– Simon Carnell
p. 82

Image: "Navabush! The Great Hare" by Puma Ghostcat.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Bel Homme XIII


Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Sunday, April 15, 2012

James Cameron's Titanic as a "Body-Guy" Film

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Today marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Earlier this year, James Cameron marked the occasion by releasing a 3-D version of his 1997 film Titanic.

In their book Lady Chatterley's Legacy in the Movies: Sex, Brains, and Body Guys, Peter Lehman and Susan Hunt note that Titanic is the most well-known film within what they call the "body-guy" genre – a genre that has "flourished virtually unnoticed for the past twenty years." Other films in this genre include Two Moon Junction (1988), The Piano (1993), Legends of the Fall (1994), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), Lawn Dogs (1997), Fight Club (1999), Enemy at the Gates (2001), The Notebook (2004), and Australia (2008). Lehman and Hunt trace the genre's manifestation in the modern era to the 1928 publication of D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, a novel that "pits an intellectual, paraplegic, impotent upper-class landowner against his virile gamekeeper for his wife's affections, with the latter winning out in all ways."

In the following excerpt from Lady Chatterley's Legacy, Lehman and Hunt define the "body-guy" genre and discuss the ways in which it is exemplified in James Cameron's Titanic.

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For his epic [Titanic], writer-producer-director James Cameron masterfully intertwines a broad array of genres: romance, action, adventure, and historical drama. The film belongs to yet another category, which has flourished virtually unnoticed for the past twenty years: the "body-guy" genre, as we call it. In the genre's classic form, a beautiful, intelligent, but discontented woman is engaged or married to a cultured, intellectual, upper-class male. The woman's discontent is quelled when a working-class man, often tied closely to the land, awakens her sexuality and energizes her life. The body guy's masculinity and sexuality are so compelling that he rescues the woman from the stultifying world of the successful "mind guy," who is boring, controlling, and, significantly, a poorer lover who fails to recognize, let alone fulfill, her sexual needs.

Titanic contains many of the genre's key conventions. From the ship's lower tier, Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio), a penniless itinerant worker, sights the beautiful, well-dressed Rose (Kate Winslet), above him on a deck reserved for the far-from-penniless. He knows in an instant that her beauty is tinged with melancholy. With equal immediacy he knows that he has the right stuff to fix whatever is haunting her. The two meet when Jask prevents Rose from committing suicide. Soon, he is whisking her away from the upper-deck dining room and her cultured but arrogant fiance, Cal (Billy Zane), to show her a good time at a "real party" in steerage. Cal quietly sips his cognac over conversation about politics and business while inarticulate men in steerage happily fall down drunk. The fun continues for Jack and Rose when they have first-time sex in the back of a car in the ship's frigid cargo hold. Even though they have just fled from Cal's assistant, who pursued them with a gun, Jack's sexual performance is perfect. In a graphic image, we see Rose's hand slap against the rear window and trace a pattern in the steamy condensation, the PG-13 signal of intense orgasm from vigorous penetration sex. To confirm our imagination, the next shot shows Jack and Rose in afterglow, their bodies glistening with sweat. At this point, there's no going back for Rose. She risks her own death to be with Jack, who, as she says, "saved her in every way a person could be saved."

. . . Typical of body guys in the pattern, Jack is a manual laborer, but he is somewhat unusual in that he's also an aspiring artist. He is, however, far from intellectual. Jack lived in Paris at the height of the modernist movement, a time when artistic style and political action coalesced, but he seems untouched by the innovative milieu, sketching instead in a highly conventional, realist style against which the philosophical artists rebelled. Perhaps most key to his body-guy status. Jack sketches female nudes and body parts, and his models are prostitutes. His art is that of the sexed body and the working-class street. In one of the film's integral scenes, he sketches Rose nude in what becomes a type of foreplay. His art, his sexuality, and body-guy persona are fused.

Jack's masculinity is dramatically privileged over Cal's, so emotion reigns over intellect. In establishing the mind/body opposition in this manner, Cameron plugs firmly into an anti-intellectual ideology so familiar to American culture. He reinforces the popular myth that the mind is a boring place – a site that could never be stimulating, erotic, or even fun. Those qualities are attached instead to the party in steerage. When Jack urges Rose to dance, she says, "I don't know the steps," to which he replies, "Neither do I. Go with it. Don't think." When Rose tells Jack that she will go with him when the ship docks, he says, "That's crazy," to which Rose responds, "I know. It doesn't make sense. That's why I trust it."

The world of the mind represented by Cal and other "real-life" men on the Titanic such as Benjamin Guggenheim and John Jacob Astor is dismissed as the "snake pit" by the loveable nouveau-riche but social pariah, Molly Brown (Kathy Bates). Obviously, the first-class world of cigars, cognac, and conversation could be presented as one of pleasurable vitality rather than deadly boredom, and just as obviously, Rose could find erotic fulfillment with a man from that world. And, indeed, the film potentially contains such a man in the character of Thomas Andrews (Victor Garber), the designer of the Titanic.

. . . Perhaps the most compelling similarity between Andrews and Jack is that they both "see something" in Rose. Although Andrews may seem to be a type of father figure, he appears barely middle-aged, and his place within the narrative structure makes it clear that Cameron could just as easily have made him a potential lover for Rose – one who attractively represents the world of the mind. Although Jack and Andrews are linked, the relationship between Rose and Andrews functions ultimately to emphasize the impotence of the educated, upper-class man as compared to working-class potency. Jack is able to motivate Rose and effect her survival in a way that Andrews cannot. As the ship is sinking, Andrews' parting words to Rose are, "I'm sorry that I didn't build you a stronger ship." Not surprisingly, the most iconic image from the film celebrates the liberating bodily experience Jack provides as and Rose stand on the ship's prow, sensuously feeling the rush of the wind; the "king of the world" moment.



Related Off-site Links:
Prayers and Silence Mark Titanic Centenary – Jill Lawless and Lefteris Pitarkis (Associated Press, April 15, 2012).
Titanic Anniversary: Ship's Gay Passengers Revealed in New Research The Huffington Post (April 13, 2012).

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Dancing Hares II



Image: "Dancing Hares" by Sophie Ryder (Ballantrae Park, Dublin, Ohio). Photo by Tim Perdue.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Boys Will Be Boys III


Image: Subjects and photographer unknown.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Eostre – Goddess of New Life Beginnings


The following is excerpted from Swain Wodening's essay on the Goddess Eostre. This essay was first published at Wednesbury Shire of White Marsh Theod.

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Eostre is a very obscure Goddess, and uniquely Anglo-Saxon Pagan. She is not mentioned at all in the Norse corpus and only fleetingly in the Old English by Bede in De Temporum Rationale. Her material is so scant that some scholars have speculated she was not a Goddess at all, but that Eostre was merely a name for the holiday. Her name is connected for words for "east" and "shining." It is therefore related to the Greek godname Eos, Goddess of the dawn in their pantheon. Finding place names indicating her worship are difficult due to this relation to the word east. Her name survived in the German name of the Christian holy tide as Ostara, therefore if she was a Goddess, she was worshipped there as well.

In order to understand anything about the Goddess Eostre (or the Goddess or Goddesses worshiped at that time) we must draw on the traditions associated with the holy tide. Grimm in his Teutonic Mythology maintained that "Ostara, Eástre, was goddess of the growing light of spring." The date of the holy tide would make this a reasonable conclusion. Holy water in the form of the dew or water collected from brooks was gathered at this time. Washing with it was said to restore youth. Beautiful maidens in sheer white were said to seen frolicking in the country side. Also according to Grimm, the white maiden of Osterrode, was said to appear with a large batch of keys at her belt, and stride to the brook to collect water on Easter morning. Cross buns were of course baked and eaten. While this could be a Christian addition, that cakes were often use in Heathen rites is apparent in any survey of the lore. And the cross may be symbolic of the rune Gebo or the buns may represent the sun wheel. Easter eggs seem to go fairly far back in both English and continental celebrations, and of course symbolize the beginning of new life. The hare also known for its fertility appears fairly early in Easter celebrations. Bonfires and vigils also seemed to play a role in many Easter rites.

Based on this, Eostre would appear to be a Goddess of purity (the holy water), youth and beauty (the young maidens), as well as one of new life beginnings. . . .


To read Swain Wodening's piece on Eostre in its entirety, click here.


Image: Artist unknown.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Monday, April 2, 2012

The Hare and the Moon


The following is excerpted from The Leaping Hare by George Ewart Evans and David Thomson.

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. . .The moon is perhaps the most manifest symbol of [the cycle of being] . . . the universal becoming. At one part of its cycle the moon disappears – dies – and is born again three nights later; and it is not only an emblem of the natural process of birth, growth, decay and regeneration but of the mystical idea that underlies most primitive initiation rites: that a being must first die before he[/she] can be born again on to a higher spiritual level.

Now the moon and the hare occur together in myth and folklore – in India, China, Africa, Mexico, North America and Europe; and the immediate question we have to answer is: why is it the hare rather than any other creature that is so identified?

. . . First, the hare is nocturnal and spends most of its day in a shallow form on the found; and unless someone approaches very closely it will not move away from its resting place. Apart from certain times of the year, in the spring mating season or during the corn-harvest when the hares are disturbed, there are few to be seen about the countryside. But you will frequently see them out at dusk or in the light of the moon, moving about and feeding in the fields. If they have lain in the open or in the woods or reeds of a marsh for the best part of the day, they will come out into the open at night to feed and disport themselves. . . .




See also the previous posts:
Hare and Moon
The Hare on the Moon
Magical Creatures
Strawberry Moon Hare
Hare Moon
In the Light of the Moon
Moon-Struck


Image 1: "Luna Moon Hare at Samhain" by Wendy Andrew.
Image 2: "Moon Hare" by Michael Gage.
Image 3: "Moon Run" by Anna Pugh.