The Wealth of Recylcing

     So I've pondered the why of sequels, peering ever deeper in their murky depths, and have found that the only real conclusion to their unending proliferation and popularity stems from their ability to appeal to the instant-gratification crowd, knee-jerk reactions expected by audiences who understand the marketing, presentation and movie itself are there to cater to the largest base of people possible, namely by broadening the average movie to reach the average person.  I began to try and apply this methodology to simply reproduce a proven system or method to various forms of entertainment.  I found it is not only the cost effectiveness of reproducing or recreated already given concepts that drives companies and producers to inexorably rehash old ideas, but this almost cannibalistic nature of adding minor "newness" to already prolific forms has become not only an industrial norm, but a necessity.

 

     Consider the telephone.  I was remembering the good ol' days when I'd call up my friend Alexander Graham Bell.  Seems he had a pretty good invention, and getting it patented was one of the most valuable ideas of all time.  Nowadays we have an overabundance of need for situational and useless modifications such as speed-dial and call-forwarding, caller ID and voice-mail, conference options, etc.  I just find it funny that we call modern phones "smart phones" as if Bell's idea was stupid.  Now our phones are essentially pocket PCs, with all the esoteric bells and whistles.  Perhaps I'm getting to off-topic.  But the idea of patents existing is to receive credit for the invention of a new device, but now, in our over saturation of consumerism, it's become necessary for companies to rip each other off simply to survive.  When Apple released the iPad it was mere months before most other mobile communication companies had their supplemental version; from the bevy of computer tablets after it, and even the PC stylus-operated pads that predated the iPad, the idea of building a slightly reworked alternative to another inventor's original seems to be a staple of almost all consumer products, various forms of entertainment, not withstanding.

     We have reached the point where, at least technologically, we have so many facets and immeasurable depths of overly-complex language of hardware and syntax of software, that it's nigh-impossible to not entirely clone the work of another inventor and moderately modify it into whatever recycled newness we may muster.

Obsessive-Destructive Disorder

     Merlin's ultimate end (since "death" isn't quite accurate) and the descent of poor Abu Kasim seem to be strongly interrelated.  The main differing element between the two stories is that Kasim's unfortunate circumstances committed unto him by his shoes, or seemingly as a result of Kasim's own actions are, unlike Merlin's demise, not a direct willing result on Kasim's part, but rather an incidental set of actions who, liberally manipulated through chance, and Kasim's unwillingness to part with his tattered footwear.  Merlin chooses to allow Niniane to overwhelm him, by the power of his own magics, willingly and knowingly letting himself be captive by what he represented at his essence: powerful and infallible magic.  The root of Merlin's power and the strongest characteristic which best describes him is his immense knowledge and abilities of magic.  Zimmer says that Merlin had to be bested by his own powers, there being no other way Merlin could be defeated, not simply because it was the only force strong enough, but that Merlin's existence and the ultimate archetype of the power of magic, thus also the powers of faerie and nature, preordained Merlin to eventually succumb to nature itself.  Merlin was made, birthed, by the inherent might of nature, so he may never die, only return that borrowed energy back to the wilds.  True, Merlin's unfaltering love towards Niniane helped him abandon his resolve to protect the world of men, ultimately returning to not death, but trapped in this tower, Niniane's own creation.  Merlin can not cease to be, only cease to influence our world.  His end was his own doing, a willing enslavement, not to his lover, but rather to his own undying addiction to magic; Merlin recognized the only way to return to nature was to be conquered by the pinnacle of nature which was his own knowledge of magic.
     While Merlin's sacrifice was to love, and also to prevent the powers he wielded to be forever out of man's reach, Abu Kasim's end was brought about through his own inability to disconnect himself from that which most defined him: not his slippers, but his covetous nature.  Being a rich (and therefor skilled) miser, his ability to determine the values of possessions and his propensity for bargaining led him to be unable to let go of so simple an item.  He didn't value the shoes themselves for their sentimentality but for the way that his voracious approach to consumerism and bargaining was his best asset, the facet of himself that most defined who he was.  Following the story of Abu Kasim's slippers Zimmer talks of the inevitable obsession of man, their actions being a result of subconscious impulse.  He describes the vice or virtue that pervades the individual through it's spellbinding nature.  Merlin, too, fell to this device.  It was Merlin's mastery of magic that defined him, so it had to be his inclination (though in Merlin's case, it was clearly conscious) to be entrapped by his own obsession with magic, ultimately becoming literally consumed by it.  So, too can we see Abu become driven to his own undoing by firstly being unable to part with his useless remnants, but eventually his inability to stop his attempts to cut himself off from his shoes.
     Here we see the culmination of the sacred stages of life, as Zimmer describes; Merlin and Kasim living the hermit stage, Kasim having thrown out all his worldly goods and being deprived of his fortune has lost all.  Merlin, conversely, chose his life of seclusion to somewhat protect the world of man from his secrets.  It is here that they both turned inward, focusing on themselves, experiencing the hermit stage.  Merlin enters the stage of the pilgrim by freeing himself of all obligation and connection to the world by physically removing himself from it, whereas Kasim has lost his wealth and material goods through his own series of actions, though he less willingly attains the pilgrim stage.  This repeated function of man's demise being their own doing, whether conscious or unconscious, through each person's most definable attribute, their own element of being, their worst or best function, paints a world where tragic figures exist to be their own undoing, doomed not from their own obsessions, per se, but from their inability to change or abandon their obsession, despite their lifelong initiation through the four sacred stages of life.  They are given all the tools to react to themselves, and forsake obsession, but at long last, they are bound to destruction for their previous unwillingness to abandon it, regardless of who they become, the obsession that they used to not only posses, but let define them, can not be expected to allow them to exist.

northrop frye innocence of intellect, terms of romance, bioshock infinite as a true sequel, sequel vs. spiritual sequel WORK IN PROGRESS

Frye was Right

     Damn you, Northrop Frye!  You were right, as usual.  I keep trying to find a way around it, but I cannot deny what seems to ring true as a constant, that the immature, hackneyed premise of reducing everything to the simplest of terms is exactly the best way to understand romance, or more suitably, to understand why people like romance.  I keep finding assurance of this in each of my attempts to dissent Frye's opinion, but I find it closer to fact with each mistrial.  I loathe a sequel whose existence needs not be.  I've been trying to understand the unending cacophony of films begetting bastardized versions of themselves time and time again, other than the demand from the audience for entertainment void of any demand for the redundancy of surplus thinking.  I don't want to relearn new characters and shit, just give me the old story with a new setting, please.  I am reluctantly finding that the very reason we go to see sequels is the promise of simplicity.  We know we're being catered to as if children, but we still cheer inside when the main character doesn't die from a dramatic situation from which there is no drama because we know they are safe, not because the character had a handle on the danger, but because we feel no drama for someone we know, simply because the franchise can't kill them, are safe from any lasting harm.  It's bullshit and we know it, but we love it so.  Sequels stoop down and spoon-feed us the lowest common denominator because not only do we actually enjoy it in a guilty sense of pleasure, but we have come to actually expect it.  Sequels are there in the simplest terms for us to enjoy the movie's event, the explosion of sound and movement, something distracting us from ourselves, it's just a sad reality that we have reduced and oversimplified our distractions to be as focused and predictable as modern sequels or remakes have gotten.

Sequels: Why?

     In my last post I raged about the proclivity of game or movie publishers being so attached to the re-imaging of already existing content, and this weekend I saw no true exceptions.  I went to see the Hunger Games, not having read the books, and was told countless times before even viewing that this movie did, in fact, already exist.  It was a Japanese film called Battle Royale and was also a book before being turned into a movie.  Perhaps coincidental, and often debated by the various fans of either movie that they are far from similar, it still represents that Hollywood ideal of don't make something good and new, take something good and make it better;  I wasn't even through the previews before this was confirmed by a trailer for the remake of the first film I ever saw, Snow White.  My problem with the overabundance of sequels is that they serve no purpose.  Sure, some stories can't be told within a single book or film and need that extra time to establish a premise and develop characters in deeper ways, but I always am left asking the question that I fear whomever may speak on the behalf of the filmmakers: why?  What was wrong with the other versions of Snow White?  Sure, Disney left out the whole part with the huntsman and this new film seeks to amend that oversight, calling the movie Snow White and the Huntsman, allowing the film to portray the story closer to the text than the Christianized context of the Disney cannon.  I searched IMDb for films named "Snow White."  There were 49 good matches that I can say are related to the fairy tale, so I must ask you, 2012's Snow White and the Huntsman, why?  Why do you exist?  This story has been told countless times, in countless ways, even variances involving the three stooges and a feature-length animation.  What do you bring to the table outside a graphical facelift and the possibility of 3D?  How can there be so many discrepancies in style and function between each iteration when they must assumably all have access to the source literature?