> On Jun 25, 6:07 pm, Citizen Jimserac gmail.com> wrote:
>

>> On Jun 25, 4:37 pm, boris badenov yahoo.com> wrote:

>

>>> also sprachsupermann...

>

>>> 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 findStargateso facinating. There were many
>>> films that tout, explicitly or implicitly, sociopathic erges and
>>> bias,
>>> but I believe tha t 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 sawStargate, 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.

>> Thank you for quite an interesting AND intriguing perspective
>> onStargate, one of my favorite movies.
>> I shall most certainly view it again in the light
>> of the implications and interpretations which
>> you have suggested, there DOES seem to be
>> an element of definite applicability of your
>> interpretation connecting current events with the movie.

>

>> One often wonders if the screenwriters and producers
>> INTEND to make the implications or ambiguities
>> that appear in films and in many cases I believe
>> that they do.

>

>> Aon Flux, for example, was SPOILED by an overemphasis
>> on the theme of technology out of control
>> by the evil scientists while ignoring the possibility
>> that it was the underlying politics IN CONTROL
>> of the scientsts that should have been emphasized.
>> My critical review of this failed film at Amazon
>> mentions this point and suggests to the producers
>> that the next time they wished to make a movie
>> with such themes, they would have done well to
>> make it based on a book, now largely forgotten,
>> "The City and The Stars" by Arthur Clarke.

>

>> V for Vendetta, on the other hand, was
>> stunning and brilliant in its adherence to
>> the conflict between the totalitarian state
>> and the obstinacy of a movement inspired by
>> a man whose desire for revenge transcended the
>> easy lies and patriotic platitudes of the
>> state.

>

>> More recently, the controversial "Golden Compass"
>> move again succeeded in staying true
>> to its ideals while concealing underneath the
>> surface an entire SPECTRUM of the most unexpectedly
>> profound metaphysical, socio-political and philosophical
>> implications VERY relevant to us and our future.
>> It was NOT, as other have tried so very hard
>> (jumping up and down and pouting and whining)
>> just another fantasy genre movie.

>

>> Citizen Jimserac

>
> You, sir, are a gentleman. I have been at my wits end about the
> greater implications of being able to produce a film as socially
> destructive as this and not have its underlying sentiments rise to the
> level of cognacy in the audience. My biggest problem is whom I had
> chose to argue this point with. Those mindless snots over at
> "alt.tv.stargate-sg1" have a lot more wrong with them than just their
> spelling abilities. Indeed, it was their over-reliance on their
> "apologetics" that tipped me off that they're something other than
> simple fans of the tv show.
> You may find some of their arguements entertaining. I am all but
> done with them...
>
> supermann