PROMETHEUS

[Alf]

Man, Twin Peaks was like nothing else. Especially the high weirdness of season 2.

I don't know man, Days of our Lives was pretty weird too

[brekin]

I always thought the Engineers looked like a fusion of Pinhead from Hell Raiser and Right Said Fred







But one thing that has struck me in retrospect is how much
like the Aryan ideal the engineers look. In fact they kind of look
like living sculptures of a lot of Third Reich statues.









It's interesting to compare the Prometheus take on the Engineers with Nazi Aryan mythology exemplified by Kossinna.

One of his best-known books was Die deutsche Vorgeschichte - eine hervorragend nationale Wissenschaft (German Prehistory: a Pre-eminently National Discipline). Here Kossinna introduced the idea that an Aryan race, superior to other peoples, could be equated with the ancient Germans, arguing that Germany was the key to the unwritten history of the ancient world. The purpose of the book is clear from the beginning, as the dedication reads, "To the German people, as a building block in the reconstruction of the externally as well as internally disintegrated fatherland."[5]

Kossinna emphasised a diffusionist model of culture, according to which cultural evolution occurred by a "process whereby influences, ideas and models were passed on by more advanced peoples to the less advanced with which they came into contact." He also emphasised that such superiority was racial in character - the special gift of the "Nordic" peoples of Germany. Kossinna’s Germanic ethnocentric theories aimed to present a history of Germany superior even to that of the Roman Empire: an expansive and powerful culture that spread civilization through heroic migrations. As he argued, "Germanic people were never destroyers of culture, unlike the Romans - and the French in recent times." Combined with Nazi ideology, this theory gave the perfect foundation for the belief that Germany occupied the leading position in world civilization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustaf_Kossinna

Aryans?



Interestingly the Engineers I think also resemble the monster in Michael Mann's The Keep, which takes place
durring WWII when the Nazi's unleash the monster in a citadel in Poland.
This website discusses how much of that creatures visual look was also inspired in part by Nazi sculpture.

http://the.keep.free.fr/ref_art.htm

« Molasar » and his final aspect form…
In 1983, many Press critiques in 1983 for the theatrical release of “The Keep” were very violent about the visual aspect of the demoniac “Molasar”. As it was explained in the analyse section of the website, this character have many cultural and religious references against the simple image of a “vampyr” illustrated in the Paul F.Wilson novel.

The visuals references of the character are “the Golem” (creature with many part of glaise), ”the vampire” (character who steals life and drinks souls, life energy), “the devil”, the “Egyptian divinity” of evil like “Rasalom” and “Thot”…And to visualize with those points, Michael Mann made references to Greece , Romanians, Egyptians and Italians Statues. Arts realisations and themes that were used during the second world war like propaganda visual by germans artists. Josef Thorak sculpted the “Surhomme” for the Germans, a sculpture about 145 inches tall.

Molasar has a proud statue look. Michael Mann asked to Enki Bilal to refer to Austrian helmets for creating the monster's skull. Its body is inspired to sculptures from Egypt to 1945 and especially from artists who worked during that murky period of history: Fritz klimsch, Josef Thorak, Richard Schiebe, Georg Kolbe, Arno Breker...

The Austrian helmet angle is interesting regarding The Keep monster. And if you recall the Engineers have helmets to.


Which do resemble Nazi stormtroopers.

Which resemble Star Wars stormtroopers.

Which kind of resemble The Engineers helmets.




I also think the Engineers resemble this George Washington statue, one of our "founding fathers"
who happens to be one of the genocidal engineers of our country.

The Revolutionary War is ordinarily presented as a conflict exclusively between colonists and the British, fought along the northern Atlantic seacoast. George Washington’s War on Native America recounts the tragic events on the forgotten western front of the American Revolution—a war fought against and ultimately won by Native America. Although history texts often erroneously present the Natives, primarily the Iroquois League and the Ohio Union, as “allies” (or lackeys) of the British, Native America was in fact working from its own agenda: to prevent settlers from invading the Old Northwest.
Throughout the war, the unwavering goal of the Revolutionary Army, under George Washington, and its associated settler militias was to break the power of the Iroquois League, which had successfully held off invasion for the preceding two centuries, and the newly formed Ohio Union. To destroy the Natives who stood in the way of land seizure, Washington authorized a series of rampages intended to destroy the League and the Union by starvation. As a result, uncounted thousands of Natives perished from New York and Pennsylvania to Ohio. Barbara Alice Mann tells how, in the wake of the massive assaults, Native America nonetheless won the war in the West and managed to maintain control of the land west and north of the Allegheny–Ohio River systems.

http://books.google.com/books/about/Geo ... qW4be2kw8C



It seems under the pretext of war Washington carried out genocide against native Americans for a land grab.
His family were part owners of the Ohio Company, a for profit land speculation company.

The Ohio Company, formally known as the Ohio Company of Virginia, was a land speculation company organized for the settlement by Virginians of the Ohio Country (approximately the present state of Ohio) and to trade with the Indians there. The Company had a land grant from Britain and a treaty with Indians, but France also claimed the area, and the conflict helped provoke the outbreak of the French and Indian War. No lands were actually settled, and the company ended operations by 1776.

In the mid 18th century, many within the British Empire viewed the Ohio River Valley, a region west of the Appalachian Mountains thinly populated by American Indians, as a source of potential wealth. In the 1740s, British and Irish businessmen such as George Croghan and William Trent were moving into the area and competing with French merchants in the lucrative fur trade. Land speculators looked to the Ohio Country as a place where lands might be acquired and then resold to immigrants.

In 1747 a number of influential men organized the Ohio Company of Virginia in order to capitalize on these opportunities. The Ohio Company was composed of Virginians, including Thomas Lee as president, Nathaniel Chapman as treasurer (1709–1760),[1] John Mercer as the company's secretary and general counsel, John's son George Mercer as the company's agent to England, two of George Washington's brothers, Lawrence Washington (who succeeded to the management upon the death of Lee) and Augustine Washington, Jr., as well as Englishmen, including the Duke of Bedford, Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie, and John Hanbury[disambiguation needed ], a wealthy London merchant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_Company

Washington considered Native Americans an inferior race to be exterminated much like the Nazi's did others and the Engineers
in Prometheus laconically go about doing the same.

Perhaps Prometheus is a conscious, or subconscious, reflection on our genocidal forbears?

[2012 Countdown]

Some of that is interesting and I can see connections.
Just fyi though, most imperial sculpture has that look. Greek, Roman, and even Soviet.
Also 'heroic' scale (8' tall people).

I'm staying away from the GW connection, as I think thats too tenuous.

I'd compared the blaming humanity for killing engineer/Christ is like blaming the jews. Stupid, but thats what the angle seems to be, so maybe...
And if that is the case, maybe the engineers ARE supposed to be Aryan-like.... and if that is so, again, I'm going to be dissapointed.

Also, if these are Aryans who want to kill us, why the hell wouldn't 'we' kill Christalien? And what about the Christian way? Sermon on the mount, turn the other cheek, love thy neighbor? Did the AlienChrist not preach that? Did humans just make all that up? (going with the paradigm here). Again I say 'Forgive them lord for they know not what they do'. WTF.

[Luther Blissett]

The Aryan ideal had a tiny penis? Does it still? I'm going to go ask a neo-nazi. Or were they "growers" rather than "showers"?

[brekin]

2012 countdown wrote:

Some of that is interesting and I can see connections.
Just fyi though, most imperial sculpture has that look. Greek, Roman, and even Soviet.
Also 'heroic' scale (8' tall people).

I'm staying away from the GW connection, as I think thats too tenuous.

Yes, I agree. The Nazi's specifically looked to the Imperial ideal because they thought they were the natural evolution of
that force in history. But further, it's not that they just liked the aesthetic and thought it would reinforce their worldview, I think that the worldview goes hand in hand with "that look". I think it would be hard for Roman, Soviet, Nazi in imperialistic, expansionist
stages not to have iconography that mirrored the tendency.

The Washington statue has been criticized because it is too idealistic and harks back to the mythologizing and deifying of historical humans into demi-gods or gods. I think then it is perfect in showing the tendency of the same imperial strain in America.
Again I'm not proposing Ridley said ok let's take a little bit of the GW statue, some Breker and stormtrooper (although he does have a impressive Art Director background so who knows) but more these similarities surface because having similar psychic roots they can have similar physical expressions.

I'd compared the blaming humanity for killing engineer/Christ is like blaming the jews. Stupid, but thats what the angle seems to be, so maybe...
And if that is the case, maybe the engineers ARE supposed to be Aryan-like.... and if that is so, again, I'm going to be dissapointed.

Also, if these are Aryans who want to kill us, why the hell wouldn't 'we' kill Christalien? And what about the Christian way? Sermon on the mount, turn the other cheek, love thy neighbor? Did the AlienChrist not preach that? Did humans just make all that up? (going with the paradigm here). Again I say 'Forgive them lord for they know not what they do'. WTF.

Interesting points. I think this ties into the sacrificial Christian viewpoint and the Nazi parasite meme. Which are rife in Prometheus. (Again maybe not consciously.) In the Alien universe some have to die so others have to live, and there seems there can be no peace. This is not a concept altogether foreign to Christianity or Nazism.

(Matthew 10:34-36) - "Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. "For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household."

(Luke 12:51,52) - "Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division; for from now on five members in one household will be divided, three against two, and two against three..."

[Handsome B. Wonderful]

I am not understanding the insult of 'engineer'. I think its a good as any word. They are engineering life. Maybe 'operators'? Conductors?
They aren't really scientists, they seem to just be doing what they are instructed to do/procedure.

The most frustrating part for me was when the opportunity to have a dialogue with them happened, and he didn't say a thing, just went bizerk. Dude had to know he could do that at any time, no interaction. Raw rage and emotional. Very advanced/mature of him. "Forgive them lord, for they know not what they do"...Christ would likely turn the other cheek. At least have a conversation before turning the place out.

Oh, and in the next one, if they keep going with the 'we want to destroy humanity/earth because of what they did to Christ' angle, I will be very dissapointed.
Come on. Very infantile. Goodwin aside, blame humanity is like blaming the jews. Whatever.

I don't know. I thought he was pissed to wake up after 2000 years and see two of the worst of humanity, in his eyes, an old rich man who doesn't want to die and a synthetic being. Not to mention a couple of goons who have weapons (I assume, can't remember if they had weapons or not). So he destroys them because he has to finish the job after we killed their emissary. It was their way of giving us one last chance and when we crucify him they go about exterminating us, except the mutagen gets out and starts killing them. At least that's the way it was explained to me. I saw it with a couple of buddies of mine.

[2012 Countdown]

I see what you're driving at..and the image of GW as opposed to his actuality -although that is attempted to be tackled within as well.

I'd interpret those biblical passages as a call to the higher self and that some will not heed it. Those that do will have to face off against those who want to remain more primal...but I am no Biblical student. Former Catholic, so throw in the crusades to make your point. I see it as a peversion of the Bible, but thats just my liberation theology side talking.

I will wait for maybe someone more Biblically studied to post, because I'm close to talking out of my ass.

Mr Wonderful, yes, I can see that, sure. Just seems so beneath him though. Its ascribing primal emotion and anger to him that I would hope he didn't act on or could control.

And now that I am thinking about the end, after his ship goes down, he goes after the woman. There are other ships there. "Many" according to the robot. Why not just start another ship and leave? No! He had to go after the stranded woman who would die in a few weeks anyway. Or...get in you ship, orbit, then blast the stranded. Again, his emotion overcomes him and he gets ambushed by the monster. It all seems so silly.

[ida pingala]

It's a commercial product: a Hollywood blockbuster. The necessary point of such an undertaking is always to make more money than it cost to produce and promote (in this case, a quarter billion dollars give or take). In practice, in the current movie-watching culture, this means it propels you through a sequence of quasi-tactile and manipulated emotional experiences, which you pay to see on a big screen because it stimulates in a way you may desire. These scenes are arranged around a formula using characters taken from a limited set of familiar templates, who work through a mostly predictable plot. These are the currently minimum requirements of the blockbuster, otherwise it won't get paid for. Given all this, a set of artists or craftspeople are hired for two years to pack in lots of myth, metaphor, variably interpretable messages and design.

.

Pretty bland and unimaginative, coming from someone calling self 'JackRiddler'.

[Simulist]

It's interesting to compare the Prometheus take on the Engineers with Nazi Aryan mythology exemplified by Kossinna.

Yes, and one of the things that's interesting is that if these Aryans were supposed to be such "supermen," then why were they always depicted as having such little dicks?

I mean, if you can't even have a big dick in YOUR OWN mythology... well, let's just say that there might have been some overcompensating going on in other pursuits.

[Handsome B. Wonderful]

Yes, and one of the things that's interesting is that if these Aryans were supposed to be such "supermen," then why were they always depicted as having such little dicks?

Little dicks? Those things are HUUUUUGE!!! I mean, they are huge, aren't they? As compared to min- ahhhh nevermind.

[barracuda]

Yes, and one of the things that's interesting is that if these Aryans were supposed to be such "supermen," then why were they always depicted as having such little dicks?

I mean, if you can't even have a big dick in YOUR OWN mythology... well, let's just say that there might have been some overcompensating going on in other pursuits.

Just a comment on this: during the period in which the iconography of physical male perfection was codified in the western world (classical Greek period), a large penis was considered to be grotesque, or at least comical, and was reserved for depictions of minor gods such as Priapus, or of ridiculously horny satyrs, or for fertility symbols which by their very comical grotesqueness could be used to laugh away the evil eye. Neotenous traits such as hairless pudenda and small penii were viewed as more desirable and ideal. Thankfully, things have changed and we're no longer discriminated against in such a small-minded manner.

[Simulist]

Thanks for the explanation, Barracuda. It had always seemed particularly bizarre to me to codify ones culture's "shortcomings" into its own art, but this makes a bit more sense now.

Thankfully, things have changed and we're no longer discriminated against in such a small-minded manner.

That little quip deserves some recognition.

[8bitagent]

Dear lord the Nazis were homoerotic. Nazis aggressively going after gay men is sad, but also a bit ironic.

But I absolutely hated the look of the goofy engineers. First off, the space jockey in Alien is massive. And it didn't seem like that was merely a pilot suit, but more organic. Ridly Scott did a bad fan fiction retconning to his own beautiful work

[Project Willow]

All dicks are bigger on the Internet.

[Twyla LaSarc]

IIRC old norse symbology pretty much equated their men with stallions. Then again,they didn't have an 'empire' either.

Of course the small-dicked rulers of the world would want to make it look preferably proportioned. More than a handful's a waste and primitive and a danger to the public morals of wimminfolk all that.

Is empire really all about compensation?

(my turn to hide behind the couch)