| REPLAYING THE
TAPE OF HISTORY -- BASIC ELEMENTS |
Planet of the Apes |
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome |
Waterworld |
What kind of world is this?
(Semi-barbaric, primitive, Medieval and Roman-like bastions, amid barbarism.) |
It is a society of apes who live in a
cloistered Medieval-like town that is a false utopia of ignorance, order, and stasis. This
society lives inside a religious world view defined by a sacred book, in which they were
created in God's image. They refuse to recognize that they took their civilization from
humanity. |
This movie depicts two
societies. One is Bartertown, a barbaric, walled-in trading town in the desert, modeled
after various trading towns in history. The other is what has been referred to as Crack in
the Earth, an oasis with children who live a primitive, aboriginal life. |
This movie depicts two societies. One is
a barbaric, walled-in trading town in a desert of water, modeled after various trading
towns in history. The other is a pirate ship. |
What catastrophe or forces created this
world?
(Nuclear war and ecological catastrophe) |
Nuclear war destroys the world. Human
beings become like animals and apes found a society. |
Nuclear war. |
Ecological catastrophe -- a reversal of
the poles and equator -- inundates the world with water |
What are the primary bifurcations?
(The ape city is defending itself from the truth outside. In the others, the hero sees
contrasts between two kinds of life -- benevolence versus slavery, a secular world without
dreams versus a place lost in dreams, and a brutish trading town versus a criminal pirate
ship.) |
The medieval ape town, enclosed in its
own false world view, versus the forbidden zone, where the truth about history can be
found in an archeological dig. |
Bartertown, which is corrupt, secular,
based on commerce, and without dreams versus Crack in the Earth, which is innocent and
immersed in myth. A second division is between the three levels of Bartertown: the ruler's
"throne room", above the city, the surface of the city and the underworld. |
The enclosed, floating, town versus the
pirate ship; the town versus the expanse of water; the world of water versus dry land. |
| What are other significant bifurcations? |
The present time that the space/time
travelers come from versus the future. Ape society versus human animals. |
The past of civilization versus the
present of barbarism; Bartertown versus the desert; the
desert versus Crack in the Earth; all of it versus the ruins of the city. |
Above water versus below water; Above
water versus floating in the air. |
Who or what is the controller of this
primitive world?
(the hero must struggle against exploitive dictators.)
|
A governing class made up of Dr. Zaius
and other orangutans |
In Bartertown, Aunty Entity, in the
throne room, is in a struggle for power, with Master-Blaster, the two-person unit that
runs Underworld and supplies Bartertown with methane for energy. |
A necessary dictatorship governs the
town. A thief and liar governs the pirate ship. |
| What pathologies does this world suffer
from? |
They have a childlike ignorance of the
truth of their history. |
In Bartertown life is brutish,
undemocratic and without dreams or ideals; in Crack in the Earth, people live in myth, in
childlike ignorance of the truth. |
Humanity is lost at sea. |
| What is the palliative people are given
to make up for the pathologies? |
An orderly world. |
Not relevant. |
Not relevant |
| What is the essential illusion. How is
their view of reality structured, limited and constructed? |
As noted, they believe they were created
in God's image. They perceive the world through their belief system. The human hero is
also in an illusion -- he believes he is on another planet. |
The children in Crack in the Earth are
lost in a mythology in which they believe a savior named Capt. Walker will come and fly
them home, to a world of skyscrapers and wonders, which is really the world of the past
that they have mistaken for a heaven they descended from and can return to. |
On the pirate ship, the leader tricks
his drunk crew into believing they have the way to dry land. |
| What are the means of control and
separation of the domains? |
As the name implies, it is forbidden to
go to the Forbidden Zone. Later, Zaius uses force to cover up what was found there. In
addition, this society practices extensive thought control - to stray beyond what is
acceptable is heresy. |
Distance and the desert separate the two
places. Bartertown is walled-in. |
Water separates places. The town is
walled-in. |
| REPLAYING THE
TAPE OF HISTORY - THE PLOTS |
Planet of the Apes |
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome |
Waterworld |
| Where does the hero come from |
The hero is an astronaut who comes from
the earth's past. |
The hero is ambushed and lost in the
desert when he comes to Bartertown. On two more occasions, he is stuck in the desert and
ends up in Crack in the Earth and then back in Bartertown. |
He is a traveler. |
| How does the hero become involved |
He's taken prisoner by the society of
apes. |
He is recruited by Aunty Entity to kill
Blaster, one part of the two person unit that governs Underworld. Later, he is saved by
the children and then must go out into the desert to save them. |
He is recruited to help find dry land,
in exchange for his life. |
| What spaces and domains does the hero
travel through. |
He travels from the past to the future,
from the Forbidden Zone to the ape city and then back again and then down the beach where
he learns that the apes aren't the only ones who are ignorant of the true history of the
planet. |
He lives through the holocaust, into the
barbaric present, and travels from the desert to Bartertown, up to the throne room, down
to underworld, out into the desert, to Crack in the Earth, and back to Bartertown. Then
some of the other characters travel to the ruins of a city to found a new society. Each
step is drenched with meanings, described in the essay. |
He goes from the town, which is the
current state of society, out onto the ocean, which is freedom, under the water to the
ruins, which are the past; onto the pirate ship, which is another way of life based on
criminality; up in the air in a balloon, which is their salvation and to dry land, which
is a paradise of a regained nature and the future. |
| What is the bridge between domains. |
A space ship and then horses. |
Conventional travel. |
Boats and a balloon. |
| What do the characters do that brings
this world as it is to an end or what do they try to do, if anything? |
He tries to force them to recognize the
truth about their history and goes with two ape scientists to the dig to get proof. |
Max is the disruptive force. When he
fails to be Captain Walker, some of the children leave Crack in the Earth in search of
their heaven, which breaks up that society. He goes after them and they end up destroying
Bartertown to escape. Then he sacrifices so a new society can be formed in the ruins of a
city. |
The town is destroyed by pirates so the
characters who seek dry land have to escape. The hero then destroys the pirate ship. |
| What is the new society that is created
at the end? |
It isn't. Zaius wins and they will cover
up the truth. |
At the end, Max's ethical development
allows him to save a remnant, which escapes to the ruins of a city to found a new city
that now has the story of history right, like Bartertown does, and has dreams, like Crack
in the Earth, but isn't lost in them. |
A handful of people regain a place to
stand, to start the progress of civilization. |
| REPLAYING THE
TAPE OF HISTORY - THE MEANINGS |
Planet of the Apes |
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome |
Waterworld |
| What is the depiction of mind |
Ape society is a mind that is hiding
from the truth of its origins, which, in traditional psychoanalytic thinking, would be the
truth of procreation and birth, and perhaps the proof of its primitive animal nature.
(That second idea is in fact fairly close to the manifest idea in the movie.) The human
hero represents a disturbing influence from outside that challenges this mind. The two ape
scientists represent the thinking rational part of the ego that wants to know the truth.
The information can be dug up from where it is buried, in classic Freudian style, but
Zaius, as censor and the force of repression fights that and even after the truth is
revealed, covers it up. At the end, the human hero is forced to recognize his own truth
that he had hidden from himself -- about human destructiveness and how it ruined the
world. |
The conscious will, embodied in the
throne room towering above Bartertown, is in a struggle for control with the unconscious,
embodied in Underworld. Both seek to control the surface of the city, which is the
conscious mind. Later, Max goes to Crack in the Earth, which is a mind lost in dreams and
illusion. |
|
| What is the depiction of the family |
Zaius is a controlling father who
refuses to let his children grow up and learn the facts of life and their nature, and make
progress. |
Aunty Entity and Master Blaster are
corrupt parents. She involves Max as child in their struggle for power. Later Max tries to
be a good parent to the children in Crack in the Earth. In the end, he is a good parents
and makes it possible for a new family to be created in the ruins of a city. |
|
| What is the depiction of birth |
|
|
|
| What historic model are used: |
Ape society is an amalgam. It is
medieval, in essence, a closed world based on religion, with a ruling hierarchy in which
Zaius is in charge of religion and science at the same time. But it has the beginnings of
an industrial revolution with guns and other forms of technology. And they do brain
surgery suggesting a higher level of science. |
Bartertown is based on trading cities of
the past and it is a depiction of the past of Australia. Crack in the Earth is based on
aboriginal culture. |
|
| What from contemporary society
(contemporary with the writing of the story) is used as a model |
The movie is also a depiction of the
battle between the youth and liberal culture, on the one side, and more traditional
culture, on the other, over society, religion, and the Vietnam War. Zaius is the older
generation. They are trying to get society to recognize the truth about the war and open
up to liberal, secular, influences. |
Contemporary Australia. |
|
| What does it take from ideology and
political philosophy |
The liberal secular belief that
closed-in, religiously based societies are bad and should be opened up to progress and
free thought. |
|
Waterworld is an eco-myth, based on
visions of ecological catastrophe, pollution, recycling (everyone recycles everything,
especially water); and shortages. The pirate ship is the Exxon Valdez. |
| What are the parallels from mythology
and more ancient works of imagination. |
|
Max is Moses who gets his tribe to the
promised land but can't get their himself. And he is Christ. |
The hero is Moses who leads them to
promised land but doesn't stay because, as a mutant with gills, water is his home. |
| What more recent imaginative works
appear to have influenced this? |
The Flintstones: the apes live in a rock
city. |
|
The movie translates the Mad Max movies
into a story about a post-holocaust desert of water. |
| What ironic reversals are in
the stories |
Apes have civilization and
hold their own version of the Scopes monkey trial in which they deny apes could be
descended from human beings.. |
Bartertown passes sentence
on criminals through a Wheel of Fortune type spinning wheel. it collects the junk of the
past and puts it back together in new combinations. The children mistake a photograph of a
city for "tomorrow-morrow land", which they think is a heaven they can return
to. |
People live on, and grow things on,
boats. Land is something you can buy in small quantities |
FALSE UTOPIAS OF SIMULATION AND
TECHNOLOGY |