Dark Matter (Season 1 = 2024, Apple TV, Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Connely, Alice Brage)

 This is just a brief post because, when looking through the most recent posts for something, I realized I had not gotten this one in. Dark Matter is a great show. For one, I love the adaptation of The Odyssey, especially the ingenious way to work in the struggle against the suitors upon reaching home: all the other Jason's who made it back. 

 What I want to mention briefly for this post is another subtle but brilliant application of Schrödinger's cat. The question bugged me at first: all of these Jasons are by necessity versions of Jason #1 who began in the Jason-1 world; so what makes the one who finally winds up with her THE Jason # 1? We don't see necessarily that the Jason smoking the cigar in the diner is the one we have been following the whole show, but even if we assume that, who says that the Jason we have followed the whole time is THE Jason #1? Any of the Jason's who entered that box and came back in world #1 have the right to be called THE Jason #1, unless you are making some point about observation being a determining factor, which is a known topic in probability calculus (the experiment of three doors, choose one but don't open yet, the host opens one of the other two that does not have the prize, then are your odds better sticking with your original choice or changing to the other door, or the same either way? Statistics methods say to change, and some philosophical arguments have followed with theories that the act of observation is a determining factor). But that's not really the kind of thing going on in this series.

 This series is built around the Schrödinger's-cat thought experiment. And this is the real brilliant application, and one that could be easily missed. Not only are we not justified in assuming the one we have followed is the real Jason #1, but he actually isn't YET, just as the cat is not actually alive or dead until you open the box and see. In the case of the cat, I guess you could say observation does play a role, but not the role in the example of the doors, and more importantly, this is where the analogy between the cat and the show gets shaky, but we can accept it as (1) valid for an application to vary for the sake of artistic license, an idea that itself rests more importantly on a principle that (2) analogies always break down, otherwise they would be identities (in fact, along the lines of Paul Riceour's theory of metaphor that it is the places where elements of the metaphorical situation we thought would not carry over in the analogy now, by the very metaphorical operation itself, demand we do carry them over that are the places where the metaphor generates new meaning in the form of new revelations of truth, I would note that these places where analogies break down [or even material discrepancies; see my thoughts on the magically appearing 14 feet in the graveyard in Goblet of Fire in another post] are key places to look for core meanings; the discrepancies are actual signals for good places to look).  . . . Here in the show, the observation is the immediate cause (or here, Daniela's acceptance of a particular observation as the truth), which in the doors example and the cat example (to a lesser degree)  would remain somebody putting the prize behind one of the doors or the poison in with the cat. 

It's the fact that he reaches her first and in first to convince her of his being Jason #1 that actually MAKES him Jason #1. One could sort of make an argument that, in order to be Jason #1, he has to have had the experiences of our Jason #1 in letting Amanda go, but then all the other Jasons lost her as well, so maybe you would have to say that loosing her was the criteria for making it back to world #1 but having done it by choice is the criteria for actually being Jason #1, and I have to admit some valid observation of artistic theme-work there, especially when we take into account that the loss itself has to be a criterion even within the mechanics, because she is no longer a factor at all in his mind-world that determines his intention (even when Jason #2 abandons Ryan, we have to say that it is not the actual happiness of that world that determines them going there, but rather Jason #2's subjective understanding of what would make Ryan happy . . . and given what he is doing, it's a viable argument to say that he misunderstands what truly makes any human being happy), from which one might say that the will to let go of her is necessary for the mechanics of having the right mind to be Jason #1. But it still remains that the criterion of loss would be what is sufficient to get the others back to the right world. The only theory that truly satisfies the mechanics of the cat is the theory that he isn't the one until he is the one, until Daniela accepts him as the one. (This is a different matter from that above of adaptation varying from the original so as not to be an identity; here, the mechanics remains pretty important within the construct's established rules, unlike the issue of causation above, although I still would say that the variances are advantaged loci to examine for revelation of new truths.)

Indiana Jones Films Ranking

This is from a comments thread of a post I made on FB, in which my brother commented, and the final reply of which turned into a substantial exposition of my thinking on the things.

[Original Post] 

 I am here to declare what to some will be abominable heresy: Raiders, Dial, Skull, Crusade, Temple (that order)

[Brother's Comment] 

 Absolutely agree… abominable heresy

 [First Reply]

 Ha ha . . . What would be your order? I can forgive anything other than a change in first position.

[Brother's Reply] 

 

I actually don’t have a strong opinion on the order, but I recognize that putting both Skull and Dial before Crusade and Temple is a controversial move. I’d go Raiders/Crusade tie, Skull, Dial, Temple.

If it comes down to it, I would put Raiders before Crusade because of Marion Ravenwood. That’s also why Skull ranks so high.

Temple is last because it really didn’t age well. And what I do like about it probably has more to do with John Williams.

[Final Reply]

 My main criteria is female lead, and then probably place, and then probably object . . . although I have to say that the last plays a larger role for me than it would for many and comes from a different place of thinking about what makes narratives good, and a bit of esoteric content knowledge.

I'm not much of a Mads Mikkelsen fan, but Waller-Bridges really surprised me as a strong lead in Dial, really strong, and I thought it an unexpected but well-done move to replace the slot with daughter-type rather than lover. As with you, Marion is what put Skull up higher for me, and I loved her in it, but it wasn't as strong as in Raiders or as Waller-Bridges in Dial; Blanchet was good as maniacal villain but being female is only accidental to her role (some good flavoring to it, but not central), and she could not really best either of the other two in these films anyway, not for the kind of female-lead role these films do.

Then we come to Crusade, but I have to do it by way of the undeniable bottom of the barrel, Temple. For a long time I was "The original Trilogy is so classic, untouchable." Then I got the DVD set in grad school when Hollywood was catching up with the home-media tech advancements and all the old trilogies and other sets were coming out, and I re-watched Temple for the first time in decades . . . not good. I still liked Short Round, but the shallow blond celebrity just made the bottom drop out of any character dynamics, meaning fun character play, not just "drama" (*head and voice dropping in high Shakespearean tragedy mode*).

And then this is where object and place start to come in. India is fine, but the Raj is so far removed from modern popular knowledge of the times (if you're doing social-justice criticism, yeah, do India under the Raj, but that's not this) that they had to go with things like a cartoonish version of the Thugee cult. Other than that, the landscape is a lot more just like the villain, kind of generic oogie-boogie, and the stones as objects are just kind of blah at best.

So, we come to Crusade, where the object of the Grail is very, very high theme-object real estate, not just for Judeo-Christian tradition in general, and not even just as making a Judeo-to-Christian pair of bookends, each sort of as top contender to represent its own domain . . . but rather, there are specific, actual textual instances in which the two act as ciphers for each other in one direction or the other (debated: does the Grail code the Ark to hide it in a Dan Brown sort of way [Graham Hancock's take in his The Sign and the Seal] or does the Grail fulfill and supersede the Ark in a religio-cultural reading?) SO . . . all of that seems like it would put Crusade up behind Raiders for me as the great classic pairing above all else (but, I must insist, Raiders always first . . . too classic in both place and object to beat, and then the female lead that set the standard), and so it did until Dial came out and I realized the impact of the strong female lead . . . and the blond hottie German officer that father and son both bang is far from it. Not that you have to have some super intense dramatic or self-sacrificing heroine role, as these are really swashbucklers at the end of the day, but you can do it with more interesting characters or less, and she is pretty far down that ranking, although not as bad as in Temple.

I'm not a detractor from Connery, but I'm also not any kind of particular fan, so he has zero impact on the rating at best. But, I have to say, and I can't say it too strongly because I can't really put my finger on it in detail, but the "I'm as human as the next man," and "Dad, I WAS the next man" that now makes me go "Woof!" was the kind of thing that seems practically written with Connery in mind.

So, on place and object: Egypt and the Ark are unbeatable (even the anonymous island is really just an extension of Egypt in how it presents in the film). The Ark is even better value as far as mystique, with all that has been done on the Grail even just in cinema. The places in Dial may seem not that strong for mystique, but they do have distinctive swashbuckling value, each with its own flavor for it: New York, Morocco, and Greece. They even got a bit of the flavor of the European-tight-street car chase (most strongly seen in things like the Bourne series) into the mix, but using Greece and the little scooters rather than sleek/gritty cities like Prague etc and cars. South America, for Skull, actually has its own sort of grip in modern historical imagination, with the political situations there that imbue the dense and sticky landscape with a danger beyond the snakes and spiders. After that, it's very weak sauce: Crusade has a cliched Europe-and-North-Africa thing, and I have already mentioned the faults with Temple on this point.

Specifically on object as value for a basic project of, really, turning cultural tradition into adventure, I used to be of the mind that Ark-Grail could simply not be beaten, especially when that is one place where Skull undeniably falls short (and we shall not mention the stones of Temple again). But the dial changed my thinking on that, but as I say, that has some to do with recent readings that have greatly informed my thinking on the development of the shape of thinking, or what Owen Barfield calls the "evolution of consciousness." Barfield was the fourth of the "Inklings," and largely over-looked by those who are into reading them. His main works of note are esoteric philosophy/psychology rather than engaging fiction. He breaks the history human consciousness/thinking into two major stands: the older mystical "original participation" (his key coined term) of "pantheistic" cultures (for lack of a better word, since the very idea of "theism" comes from the other strand), and the "alpha thinking" of objectivity (divide between subject and object rather than participation), which finds its clearest form in science, and its radical form in science since the scientific revolution. For this latter (alpha thinking), he posits two starting points, one of them in the train of religion and the other in the train of broader natural philosophy (the ancient world's version of science): Moses and Pythagoras. The latter is most prominent in this regard in his concept of the "music of the spheres" as the relationship between mathematical precision and the messiness of the natural world . . . and he's in the same set of thinkers known for those same things as Archimedes, our endearing little fellow from Dial.

Obviously, on this esoteric uber-nerd level, Moses and Pythagoras give me Raiders and Dial as the brilliant pair rather than Raiders and Crusade. But even without going to that realm, there is something about the idea of Greece as the birthplace of so much in human culture. Archimedes is known more for a focus on immediate physical observation (than is Pythagoras), at least in the instance from which most people know him who do, shouting "Eureka!" and running out of the house and down the street naked when he discovered water displacement as a way to determine volume and density. So you have this sort of air of the beginnings of Western sciences of observing the physical world and learning how to do shit with it with greater precision and thus power.

Rifts in the space-time continuum is in the realm of fantasy, but then so is some presence being still in the Ark that comes out in the form of screaming witchy wraiths that burn peoples' eyes out. My point with the object is what place it holds in imagination applied to "history" of how humans "learned shit" or experienced. The Ark has this great mystique from the borderlands between the Judeo-Christian tradition and "paganism" or "pantheism" or whatever was back past it that it stood out against, and Greek thought is that borderland between our "science" and whatever oogery-boogery thinking was back behind it, where "medicine" was pushing a hot rock down somebody's throat to determine whether their ailment was a bogey spirit that would kill the tribe if you didn't throw them in a deep chasm or some trope like that.

But as I say, even that is a bit more on the esoteric side, and even any discussion of object at all kind of is, over against talking about certain types of characters and better- or worse-used swashbuckling elements and settings.

I really need to copy this over onto the blog I use for collecting my ideas, just someplace to have them out of my head. When I do long comments like this, it's in part to keep my composition muscles in shape (trying to choose good words and phrasings more on the fly to have those actions down better when examining other people's writing when editing), but it also does represent some of how I think about different instances of literature etc.