Katabasis in Myth and Film

I’d like to start a repository of recommendations for “katabatic” films; please feel free to add recommendations via the “Comment” tool.

If you liked THE MATRIX and Baudrillard’s essay, Simulacra et Simulations:

Existenz (1999); dir. David Cronenberg

Naked Lunch (1991); dir. David Cronenberg

Kafka (1991); dir. Steven Soderbergh

Twelve Monkeys (1995); dir. Terry Gilliam

Brazil (1985) ; dir. Terry Gilliam

If you liked CITY OF GOD:

Black Orpheus (1959); dir. Marcel Camus

A Clockwork Orange (1971); dir. Stanley Kubrick

If you liked APOCALYPSE NOW:

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930); dir. Lewis Milestone

Platoon (1986); Oliver Stone

Full Metal Jacket (1987); Stanley Kubrick

Stalingrad (1993); dir. Joseph Vilsmaier

If you liked BLEU:

No End (1985); dir. Krzyzstof Kieslowski

Dekalog (1989); dir. Krzyzstof Kieslowski

“Chaucer’s Recital Presence in the House of Fame and the Embodiment of Authority” by William A. Quinn

This article discussed Chaucer’s confusing and complex focal points of the House of Fame, comparing him to Dante and his straightforward purposes. Chaucer’s complexity creates a lack of direction as it appears he has many, possibly too many, purposes for his writing. His sequence of events provides for a very random sequence of events for the reader and his perceptions of reality become phantasms, which can be as good as reality, but not always. Chaucer attempts to prove that writing can be just as good as speech, this view is considered naive, and his failure and struggles with the writing prove that his illusion. The article goes on to take pieces directly from Books I, II, and III to further prove his point. In Book I, presents his information uncategorized and jumbled that allows for confusion on the readers part. He presents “fundamental questions” and leaves the answers up in the air for the readers interpretation. He later attempts to harmonize Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Heroides. He characterizes the protagonist as a phantom, but with no demonic meaning. In Book II, Chaucer describes the characters experience with a giant, gold eagle he meets in Book I and he discusses acoustics a great deal as well. Book III opens with an apostrophe to the “God of science and of light.” He then describes how he proceeds alone into “The Dream.” This article reviews Chaucer’s Hall of Fame and shows the katabatic undertone of the story.

Article Summary:

Photography, Vision, and Representation

This article is about photography and the various thoughts and techniques that can make great photography with great meaning. It starts off with telling about Peter Henry Emerson and how he taught others that the scene being photographed had to be “naturalistic” and not a seeming made up and fake scene. The writer also makes an argument that the light is an important part in the realness of the photographs and can make photographs more natural then regular paintings or other arts. He talks about Arnheim and his ideas about how the photographer has to capture his image while other artists such as the painter have to create it. The Article also argues that we shouldn’t just have one way that we look at a photograph and that the observer can look at it like its being controlled by man. It could end up adding a neat element to the photograph that wasn’t noticed before. The camera the person uses and the lens type used also can say a lot about the photo or scene. More things that can affect and help emphasize a story going on in the photograph could be an angle of shot or the reflections of light in the scene. The author then talks about motion and how photographs can never show motion but can make the watcher believe that the motion is going to happen by using techniques such as image blur. Later on he also talks about how a thing such as a way a person looks in a scene can make deep thoughts for the viewer. The looks of a person can emphasize an object and make a meaningful connection. This article tells about many elements of photography and how it can be used to great success in creating a real feeling moment in time.

 http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.artic…

The above link will take you to an article called “Lets Burn the Burqa” written by the daughter of a devout muslim family whose mother wears a burqa.  The author goes into some explanation about how, technically, purdah (the concealment of a woman’s face or part of a woman’s head by use of a cloth) is not a strictly Islamic practice nor is it limited to muslim women.  They began as a status symbol for rich Assyrian woman and their families and were subsiquently adopted by other cultures.  Nasrin also points out that forms of the burqa are prevalent today, not just in their traditional sense but also in unlikely places such as the Catholic Church (a nun’s habit originally started as a head cloth).  

The explanation of what the burqa represents can be traced back to when men formed different religions, not a single one observers the rights and experiences of women.  Woman are then cast as sex objects who have no independent thought because they must spend their life beneath a shroud only to be revealed to their husbands and other close family like children.  

After centuries of use, the burqa has come to represent oppression of women and most of the women subjected to its restraints don’t know of any other life (or that they are worth more then an object) because the burqa is introduced to most women around the age of 7.

Preliminary Works Cited: Working Definition of Katabasis/Anabasis

Katabasis. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved November 11, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/k…
Katabasis. (n.d.) In Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia. Retrieved November 11, 2008,
from http://en.wikipedia.org
Anabasis. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved November 12, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/a…
Winkler, Martin M. (2001). The Katabasis Theme In Modern Cinema. In Classical
Myth and Culture In the Cinema (1). Retrieved November 11, 2008, from
 http://books.google.com/books?id=f4vCQYh…

Working Movie List: (Haven’t watched yet and couldn’t find how to cite a movie)
Troy
Boondock Saints
We Own The Night
Pirates of the Caribbean series
Lord of the Rings series
Tigerland
Constantine
The Godfather
300
Enemy At The Gates
Tombstone
30 Days of Night
In Bruges
Supernatural (TV Show)
Life (TV Show)

My plan is to make a mash-up/montauge of music and movies that create a working definition of katabasis. I also intend on writing a paper describing my working definition of katabasis along with an explanation for my selections.

The Hero’s Descent to the Underworld in Chekov – by Michael Finke

This article explained the significance of the decent motif in Chekov, and by doing so, showed Michael Finke’s opinion of what makes a plot katabatic in nature. He discussed several texts that he believed had a central portrayal of the decent motif. In Chekov’s Sakhalin Island the imagery is used to convey bing in hell. Chekov describes the smoke and how everything seems to be burning, and how only toads and the souls of great sinners could live in such a place. The people wondered the streats like shades and reamained silent like shades. Finke also notes how these descriptions occur in conjunction with crossing a body of water, sometimes on ferries operated by  hostile ferrymen. There is always a great sense of foreboding about what will be found on the other side. Chekov draws on Dante and Aeneas for inspiration, but relies on Dante more since the hell of Dante and of Christian mythology is associated more with a sense of sin, crime, and punishment. Finke continues on to describe The Wood Demon, Peasants, Ariadne, Sinner from Toledo, A Doctors Visit, A Woman’s Kingdom, The Student, and The Lady With  A Lapdog all have katabatic story lines and underworld motifs.

‘Now I See the Sunlight’ by Melinda Liu

This article talks about the light that women in Afghanistan are finally seeing.  Under the Taliban regime, women in Afghanistan had very little rights.  They were forced to wear the burqa, perhaps a symbol of their repression.  The burqa covers their face, hair and body.  It hides the fact that they are human, degrading them to be a lower species than men.  Women had no rights and no option to choose, they were even forced into arranged marriages.  Not only were they not allowed to work, but many were abused, physically and emotionally.  Now, the regime has finally come to an end.  Women throughout Afghanistan are rejoicing tremendously, some even burned their burqas when they heard of the news.  Jobs are opening up to women and there are no longer laws to live under the veil that hid their humanity.  However, government jobs still are not open to women.  Many of the women still refuse to remove their burqas.  They are afraid of the abuse they may receive from the urban places and they are waiting for Northern Alliance representatives to announce that they are serious about improving women’s rights.  Although women are only seeing small freedoms and only previewing what is to come, those small liberations are life-changing, especially in a world that has always been so repressed for them.

The peer-reviewed article I read was entitled, “Coveting the feminine: Victor Frankenstein, Norman Bates, and Buffalo Bill”. In it, Negra brings up two major points – one, that the monstrosity of each of these characters is derived chiefly from their lack of understanding of gender dichotomies (a culturally dictated fear), and the inability of the characters to separate themselves from their mothers, making their coveting of the feminine inappropriate. Norman Bates and Buffalo Bill in particular both are attracted and repulsed by the feminine. While each of these characters wishes in some way to be female, parading in female clothing (or in Buffalo Bill’s case, skin), they do not actually wish to be less masculine. The character’s obsession with the feminine stems from a twisted wish for transformation – females are allowed to show emotion, weakness, and fear of the unknown, not things a traditional ‘male’ can show. The princess in the faerie tale never does anything to forward the plot – this is a position that Norman Bates and Buffalo Bill find enviable. Buffalo Bill and Norman Bates both desire the supposed emotional freedom that comes with being female. As the article says, the characters desire to achieve femininity or androgyny is “based on varying degrees of muted misogyny”. All of the characters did not separate correctly from their mother figure in early childhood, and the article draws on this correlation, referencing Freud’s theories. The characters all had some sort of traumatic experience or obsession with their mothers, and so view the feminine as shifting and unreliable, even as it is desirable. As Gerard Lenne is quoted as saying in the article, “…because of this essential duality, [woman] belongs of that very nature to that world of ghosts and vampires and demons and monsters and automatons and lunatics and evil geniuses that we call the realm of the fantastic… Can we not see the concept of double, which is the true key to the whole genre of the fantastic, etched in the perfection of woman’s appearance and behavior?” The blending of the two spheres of masculine and feminine makes them inherently susceptible as characters to the abnormal. And their desires, irregular as they are due to the blending and twisting of genders, turn them into voyeuristic characters, with distinct fetishes. Norman Bates watches Marian Crane as she undresses before murdering her; Buffalo Bill desires women’s skin, and so kills them for it, and sews it into a suit he can wear.

The article also presents Victor Frankenstein as a character of questionable gender desires. I feel that, of the three characters the authoress discusses, Negra argues this point the least well. Frankenstein is presented as a man that is traumatized about the death of his mother, who then creates a monster to represent his masculine self so that he can be more feminine and emotional. Frankenstein’s creation covets – and destroys out of masculine anger – all things feminine that he sees.

This seemed, to me, to be something of a stretch. While it is arguable that Frankenstein created his monster as a subconscious was of representing aspects of his personality he was uncomfortable with, I feel that creating his monster to be masculine so that he could, in turn, be more feminine is… less likely.

Regardless, I feel that this article was a good place to start examining the differences of male and female experiences in literature (and film), and showcasing the issues that arise from blending those experiences. It gives a good breakdown as to the psychological reasons as to why the characters act as they do, showing the journey each undergoes as an attempt to achieve the illusive goal of femininity.

Michels, Agnes Kirsopp. (1981). The Insomnium of Aeneas. Classical Quarterly, 31(1).140-146. Retrieved November 14, 2008, from JSTOR database.

In this article Michels attempts to prove that Aeneas’ journey was soley to be interpreted as a dream, that he had no desire to know his own prophecy for the future.  Michels claims that because Aeneas and the Sibyl take the exit from the Underworld of the Gates of Sleep by way of gates of ivory, rather than the one of horn, Virgil intended that the trip to the underworld was to be interpreted as Aeneas’ dream from which he is awoken from.

Rather than Aeneas gaining knowledge in the Underworld, Michels claims that through body lauguage and responses that Aeaseas has a dream of insomnium.  Insomnium is a type of dream that is not worthy of interpretation because instead of providing meaning or prophecies it simply distrubs the dreamer and is no longer remembered after sleep.  This dream could also be considered an anxiety dream, being so that it reminded Aeneas of so many unpleaseant pieces from his past.  Michels tries to prove this by pointing out specific places where Aeneas pays no attention to what he had learned in the Underworld. First of which that Aeneas had no will to rule the world or desire to win the glory of establishing Rome. Then, most importantly that “at no point after he returns to the land of the living does Aeneas ever show any recollection of what his father has revealed to him.”

I chose this article to summarize because my final project has the theme of knowledge in the anabatic part of the journey to, and back from the Underworld.  I found it interesting that Michels contradicted the idea that Aeaneas had a knowledge gaining experince in his journey through the Underworld.

Norwood, F. (1954, January). The tripartite eschatology of Aeneid 6. Retrieved November 13, 2008, from JSTOR database.

Virgil chose three books from the Aeneid for his readings before Augustus. These three included the second, fourth, and the sixth. It is possible that Virgil choose these three because they were the sections that would appeal the most to listeners and readers. The description of the destiny of Aeneas to begin the foundation for Rome and the glorious future that would follow was written to appeal to Roman pride; however, the passages evoke more emotions than pride. The aesthetic effect (pleasing to the senses) of Book Six is an excellent example of Virgil’s artistry. The eschatology (beliefs concerning death) in the Aeneid combines various traditions from the religion of the citizen, the poet, and the philosopher. This is thought to be the reason why there are several inconsistencies in the book. Traditionally a man can be sympathetic to the naïveté of the underworld, long for a just underworld, or want a rational and intelligible account of death and the soul’s destiny. In combining these traditions, Virgil creates almost three different underworlds characterized by the main three geographic divisions and an explanation by Anchises.

The vivid and diverse portrayal or the afterlife gives the reader the “fullest possible measure of aesthetic effect.” This vision is made to appeal to three facets (aspects that make up a subject) of human nature including the primitive, the moral, and the philosophical. The view that Virgil wrote Book Six to appeal to all of these facets can be supported by two arguments. The sections of the underworld each have a unique and particular moods and Virgil’s later works show the same fusion of different ideals.

The Styx River has an atmosphere of mourning and sorrow. The souls gather on the banks of the river, still resemble their human forms, and most importantly have their human emotions. This part of the underworld is directed toward the primitive side of human nature and is based on human personality. Norwood described it as “simple and grotesque” (p. 18). The Aeneid tells of when Aeneas encounters people he knows who have died but are still holding on to their “earthly suffering.” The emotional connection allows the readers to relate because they are the “sufferings of humanity.” There is an absence of nationalism and all of the souls are together in one afterlife of “those who feel rather than of those who think. Tartarus has a dim, dark, and frightening atmosphere. It is a place where souls are punished and reflects the moral side of human nature. The earthly deeds of souls are the cause of their suffering, but they are physically being tortured. The physical appearance of Tartarus is vague and at times it seems to be a prison and at other times a pit. This could be intentional to add to the mysteriousness of the afterlife residing place of not only legendary sinners but all sinners. In contrast, the scene of Elysium is marked by light and peace not dark and torment. The heroes and nameless saints reside in the green fields. The moral principle of these two locations is that the souls must go through judgment and the gods reward those that are just and punish those that are not. The third and finally representation of the underworld involved Anchises’ description of the Lethe River. Here the souls would drink from the river and lose their memories in order to begin a new life. This is meant to connect with the philosophic part of human nature involving immortality, the purgation of the soul, and the transmigration of the soul.

Virgil also uses the fusion of sentences and the use of words or phrases that have vague or different meanings. He commonly fused legends with his own writing to add to the depth of his work. Virgil united diverse themes into what appeared to be a unified underworld that was complete in all aspects, but with close inspection that unity appears twisted and more than one concept is present. The aesthetically pleasing Book Six presents the tripartite eschatology (three traditional beliefs of the underworld) and shows the artistic talent of Virgil to connect to all of the sides of human nature through the physical and atmospheric description of the three regions of the afterlife.