THE SUPER HERO UNVIELED

A Unique Look At Culture and Hollywood's Movie Making Machine

Read an excerpt from the premiere epic novel Woodruff Park by T.S. Aschenge

www.sundiataslist.com/woodruff_park.html
From the Opening:
'
Woodruff Park is two fine acres of God's green space, a quarter mile of jogging trail, two dozen rod iron benches, huge cascading waterfalls and tall majestic dogwood trees that hug the horizon like there is no tomorrow........'

And from the Back cover:

‘Numerous characters inhabit the extraordinary Universe that is the epic narrative world of Woodruff Park. There are creatures large and small, both mortal and supernatural, human and anthropomorphic, ancient and legendary, gods and goddesses, Black leaders, and common folk, some righteous and others not so righteous; and then there are those who only live in 'blackface'. Nevertheless, all help to curry an original mythos with a distinctly African American Cultural Worldview. There exists little regard however, for the 'flick-ted' schizophrenic dualistic agonizing personality painfully engulfing "two warring minds in one dark body!" ---------with its human host hoping only at best to "dodge the spit of 'Their Fellows!' It is a world where there exist little dichotomy between the human experience and that of the supernatural world. Here lies the residue that betrays the living witness of mute human discourse hiding inconspicuously behind the veil of Black life in America. Through both triumph and tragedy, in word and deed, these are the passions uttered only in the hush houses of American life. It is an enchanted journey through the sparse foliage of a myriad of uniquely American 'rituals of deception'. A world born of The Maafa, and viewed back of the psychopathology and the 'tricknology' that hovers somewhere ever-present upon the illusionary surface of everyday life in the legendary colonial-settler state; like a bizarre bitter secret perpetually left untold. Like the deformed twin left hidden in the basement. Of course, we all know that she is there; nonetheless, 'we really not supposed to talk about it!' Woodruff Park eludes all of those fears and engages the reader on an enchanted sojourn through a spectacular epic of time and space; and into an authentic world of infinite possibilities. We encounter Auyurashia, the beautiful and seductive water-spirit, Queen of the Dammed and over-seerer of the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean. It is she who is the comforter to one hundred million tortured souls once carelessly cast into the sea. "I alone control the weather!" she declares. Then, there is Asi Yahola, The Black Drink Singer, come back to the South as a maniacal trickster in the satirical guise of a Harpy Eagle; still forever mocking the U.S. Government. We meet a large family of Live Oak trees (The Crying Trees) that actually do cry real tears in deep never-ending angst towards their complicity in so many senseless lynchings; and then, there are angels who act as warrior sentinels over the shattered Ninth Ward in New Orleans. And, who could ever forget the endearing Little Hannibal; the boy who would slay a Goliath and became a legend overnight. There are the mortals, some of which are just so inconceivably cruel, and others possessing humanity so deeply profound that it will simply take your breath away.This is the world that engulfs you in a Universe unapologetically set in Afrikan Time. Here is Truth spoken to Power with undaunted clarity, self-determination, and Sweet Butter Love; over a wide range of (his-)storical issues, events, and ideas. It is Ourstory, reclaimed for ourselves through the inherently pure and indigenous ethos of a voice that actually looks like us! That's What's Up!’

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

The Super Hero Unvieled

Beloved, Do you like movies like I do? More than anything else I often find myself attracted to the esoteric (or hidden) content of much of Hollywood’s Movie Making Machine. It is because the narrative production of a culture actually contains a vital subconscious matrix of its cultural memory. It no less than the substance of the embryonic and architectural template of its very own emergent ‘Will to Power’. In Tinsel town, it is the new American archetypes that are its mouthpiece; Batman, Superman, Jeckel and Hyde. Intrinsic to this ‘New Mythology’ is the ontological subtotal of its creation myths, latent phobias, and hidden desires. It is the reflective physic voice of the nation’s distinct collective cultural worldview; most assuredly re-confirming its self conscious mandate to lead in the world. Moreover, viewed as an inverted reality these classic and contemporary narratives and stories also provide a wealth of hidden knowledge variously profane and profound, nevertheless useful for their insight in the perpetual war for liberation of the oppressed. As an example: Let us remember that Tarzan ‘never even tried to get along!’ He socialized himself swinging through the trees. And, he kept groaning at people; and crying out in agony (cosmic disharmony). The Afrikan was really just looking at him in horror. As if he was crazy, or some kind of freak. “All of these beautiful sistas. What the hell is wrong with him?” If he was really such a higher form of life, then why the hell was he hanging out with the animals? And kissing on them? The Tarzan narrative along with other narratives of this genre contain quite a bit of the architectural template, and indeed a prominent shadow of the very seed of the white supremacist colonial-settler Will to Power, that for the last 500 years has truly defined the second rise of Europe. Remember now, raised by the beasts, Tarzan finds himself very much like Superman living in sorrowful bitter disharmony with the rest of the Universe. Together, both of these fictional characters can actually be viewed as one composite figure, expressing two archetypical eras of the colonial mandate. Tarzan hovers high above the village forever crying out in bitter agony, and while he appears a strange curiosity to the colonialist out for another Afrikan adventure, he actually exists as but an extension of their deepest desire to conquer the world itself. His agony is their own, and therein lies the archetype codified in a bizarre sense of entitlement.Superman wears a pentagram on his chest and in it a serpent signifying illumination and the Kundalini energy climbing up the spine. However, it is the blue crystal (quartz) of Native American spirituality that is his greatest nemesis; the one thing that so eludes him, saps all of his energy, and causes him the deadliest terror in a strange new world-----The religion of the natives’ secrets immeasurable power; a hermetica incomprehensible to him.The closer that the elite move towards their goal of new world domination, the more blatant their inherent pathology becomes and the more explicit their narrative mythology is then retold. H.G. Wells himself once said that science fiction was born out of the singular resolve to “inculcate the masses in future developments!” And, we have often been warned that whatever we are to view on the Tell-A-Vision screen today is to be manifest in the world within 20 years. Remember the cell phone technology of ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Get Smart’ of a generation ago. And, witness the march of the machines as cloning, marshal law, and mutant phenomena are now in vogue as popular genre in Hollywood’s movie making machine. Today Beloved, we are witness to the bizarre unfolding of the lotus flower of world domination in the new Technocratic Age, and the narratives, both classical and contemporary, of Euro-centric ontological import, betraying through their archetypes as they do, the very substance of white world supremacy, born of a collective historical self-utterance, they offer us an even greater insight for our understanding of the true Matrix that we now live in. Tarzan and Superman hovering high above the village and the metropolis both fraught with bitter cosmic disharmony; Batman, Spiderman, Wolfman, Dracula, Jeckel and Hyde, all existing in conspicuous estrangement from their curious upbringing, and no doubt, from the sexually frustrated women in their lives. From beast to man, and from man to beast- -The one, a curious attractive savant, with but a strange eccentric demeanor. The other, a beast hero-vigilante or villain-rapist. What part do all of these characters play in the subconscious scenario of the alienated white supremacist will to power? One thing is for sure, and it is that ‘behavior is part of a combined empirical substance; curried as data, it can indeed be retooled as a weapon of war!’ When we view the narrative production of a people, we are accessing an informative matrix of creative subconscious self utterance. It is the sum total of the various phobias and latent anxieties pre-extant in the very seed of that culture, betrayed through the archetypes. Often, they are curried in the idiom of an ethos acting to suppress a haunting primordial collective memory. The ring-shout of the slave camps, a broken trail of tears. Have you ever noticed that the caveman narrative is most often cast as a comedy? Well, perhaps The Flintstones is really not meant to be funny at all, rather a very painful memory that is perhaps but shrouded in humor. Join the discussion!