> also sprach supermann...
>
> Welcome to the existential nightmare that is known to most as
> STARGATE. Stargate was a PG-13 sci-fi epic that was released in the
> summer of 1994 to lack-luster reviews, but some popular acclaim. The
> many critics that panned this film concentrated on what they believed
> were plotholes and sub-standard creative abilities on the part of the
> script. Stargate, they belived, was a badly written story, and with
> their strict time restraints in viewing new releases, the critics
> were
> forced(?) to move on to the next lemon without giving Stargate a more
> careful look. The general audience did more or less the same. That
> had
> turned out to be an earth-shattering mistake.
> The official synopsis is as follows: A discredited Egyptologist,
> Daniel Jackson (played by James Spader), decyphers the function of an
> ancient mechanical portal, long buried in the sands of Giza. Upon
> which, the air force dispatches a team of "military specialists" to
> utilize the portal to transport themselves halfway across the
> universe
> to a desert planet inhabited by north africans, "enslaved" to labor
> in
> quartz mines by an astounding being identified as the Egyptian god,
> Ra. In the coarse of events, the specialists do battle with the sun
> god, "liberate" the down-trodden inhabitants from forced servitude,
> and rescue the earth from total inihilation at the hands of Ra.
> An erroneous social and political context was applied by the
> audience when they had viewed this film and certain salient details
> about the characters, their behavior, and their motivations have all
> been left unsaid...or even unnoticed. The erroneous context applied
> was simply that this is just a "movie". Stargate is not just a
> science
> fiction film. I would be more accurrate if I were to refer to it as a
> parable about a particular event....our present situation in Iraq,
> how
> we came to be involved there, and the moral, ethical, and psychiatric
> disposition of the people who got us there.
> The movie STARGATE never made any sense as a science fiction tale,
> but as a primer of ideological aggression of the reactionary
> persuasion, it is nothing less than an emotional template of what may
> be going on in the heads of the Bush Crime Cartel and their
> immeadiate
> adherents in the right wing. Certain details may not match up, but,
> as
> we all have seen, the results are generally the same.
> It is with this that I find Stargate so facinating. There were many
> films that tout, explicitly or implicitly, sociopathic erges and
> bias,
> but I believe that STARGATE is the first film that is so totally
> self-
> aware and accepting of its anti-humanist leanings, that for reasons
> only known to themselves, the producers allowed, in the script,
> subtle
> hints and clues that the sun god RA is actually little more than the
> victim of Colonel O'Niel's military aggression, and it is the Colonel
> himself who is more worthy of being designated the "villian". These
> so-
> called clues are definite and unshakable, once they are percieved.
> Unfortunately, "perception", as in the case of watching this film,
> is a matter of political outlook. Far too many people watched this
> film and could not see below its glossy, symbolistic superficiality.
> Noone was watching too closely, or listening too carefully.
> The "facts" are as follows:
>
> Colonel Jack O'Niel, a deranged and suicidal individual, was given
> charge of an atomic weapon, presummedly under circumstances that
> would
> preclude a sane and well-adjusted man.
>
> O'Niel secretly transport the weapon, unbeknownst to his
> subordinates in his recon team. The Japanese would refer to this
> policy as "kamakaze". A recon team without a nuke would be considered
> "expendable". A recon team WITH a nuke would be considered already
> "expended".
>
> You know, if a squad of american soldiers were to travel billions
> of
> light-years through a stargate, only to arrive on a planet inhabited
> by harmless, pre-industrial north africans, you would think that
> relations with these people would go with little trouble....instead
> of:
>
> In the very first instant upon meeting the africans, O'Niel drew
> his
> weapon and brandished under the nose of a frightened teen-ager. The
> boy screamed and fled. Noone else in O'Niel's team saw it fit to draw
> their own weapons.
>
> Later, and with the very same boy, O'Niel again found it neccessary
> to menace the boy again with an automatic weapon. The child, merely
> curious, had attempted to pick up the weapon to examine it. He
> screamed and fled again after O'Niel's second assault.
>
> And later still, when O'Niel and his men were, in every respect,
> "legally" apprehended by Ra's guards and brought to the throne room
> to
> answer for, among other things, the presence of an atomic bomb among
> their personal effects, O'Niel's only response was to physically
> attack everyone in the throne room. All this, within close proximity
> of a dozen young children, mostly pre-teen. And at the climax of this
> scuffle, O'Niel trained his weapon at these same children, struggling
> with the idea of killing them in order to get at a seated and unarmed
> Ra. At the instant that O'Niel was struck down from behind, it was
> clear enough that he was losing his "struggle" and was about to pull
> the trigger.
> With a movie audience that's an expert at drawing moral conclusions
> based on a quick sketch of moral character in action, how could so
> many have accepted what has taken place in that room to the point
> that
> they ignored all the subsequent war crimes accumilated by O'Niel by
> the end of the movie? They were numerous:
> Needless to say, according to continuity, those same schoolchildren
> were still in the pyramid when it was destroyed by O'Niel and
> Jackson.
> Prior to that, O'Niel led a battillion of heavily armed teenagers
> on
> a frontal assault against Ra's pyramid fortress( All individuals
> deemed "teenagers", are, in my estimation, well below 18 years in
> age.). A situation made worse as they took on heavy casualties. If
> the
> boys had decided to do this on their own, it's a tragedy of it's own
> making, but they were, apparently, illegally conscripted by O'Niel
> for
> combat they weren't trained to win, in a situation instigated solely
> by O'Niel.
> during the same firefight, according to editing, it appeared as
> though Jackson accidentally shot one of his own boys...he squeezed
> off
> a couple of shots backwards over his shoulder without aiming, looking
> in another direction.
>
> Prior to that, O'Niel captured one of Ra's guards, an individual
> barely out of his teens, himself. This person, who surrendered
> without resistence, was executed with his own weapon by O'Niel,
> solely
> to prove to the north africans that the guard was a mortal, like
> themselves.
>
> Prior to that, while hiding in a cave, O'Niel had made the partial
> admission that his case was less than defensible, but now "that Ra
> has
> the bomb", something must be done. Considering that "the bomb" was
> actually the weapon that O'Niel secretly brought with him from earth
> in the first place, that kind of circular logic to justify an action
> movie maybe a disturbing indicator.
>
> And prior to that, During the one verbal confrontation with Ra, The
> sun god essentially made a rational ultimatum of exchanging the life
> of O'Niel for the lives of "all who knew" Jackson...implicating the
> planet earth. By this time, O'Niel was so criminally culpable, that
> the choice was perfectly easy to make. Needless to say Jackson didn't
> make that choice. To be fair, the dialogue did not make that point
> explicitly clear, but that was the underlining jist of what Ra meant.
> And although one may resent being dictated terms to by an enemy in a
> position of power, You must remember, Ra didn't CHOOSE to be the
> enemy. It is the most disturbing moral aspect of this movie.
> However, on the other hand, the conversation could also be
> interpreted as your run-of-the-mill "Ming the Merciless" tirade,
> threatening the earth and it's inhabitants if Jackson didn't comply
> with his demands.
> The grammer and syntax of the verbal exchange was so precisely
> ambiguous, that it was possible for even the most discerning observer
> to derive two different meanings from Ra's statements. The verbal
> acrobatics of this dialogue seems to indicate to me that the
> producers
> were well aware of the moral and ethical ambiguity, but sought to
> lean
> the movie audience toward the reactionary side by using certain
> stereotypical cues and signs, like menacing mood music and indicative
> posturing, to "demonize" Ra's character before the audience. For
> example, when I first saw Stargate, I thought Ra was the "heavy",
> solely because of the way he walks about the throneroom; sexually
> suggestive, stalking like a cat almost, with a soundtrack that's just
> as feline as he is. I knew that no good could come from such a
> person.....and he hasn't even spoken his first lines yet. Somehow,
> "content of character", the exact criteria in judging "good" from
> "evil", was completely absent from these procedings.
> When one produces a "good vs evil" action film, but shows a certain
> disinterest in the core meaning of what "good" and "evil" stands for,
> then it stands to reason that this character flaw will somehow
> translate itself into the screenplay....as it did here.
> But we needn't fuck around with such hub-bubbery as this. The film,
> STARGATE, is obviously politically driven. Do I have a problem with
> it? I sure do, but it's not the main thing. The main thing is that so
> few people percieved the true motivations of this greek tragedy, that
> if anything like this were to take place in real life, at the expense
> of american taxdollars, would there be enough people to garner
> political support to put a stop to it?
>
> Tragically, in our particularly sad case, the answer is no.