2010_5_10 Movies Galore
With Sue gone to Santa Fe for 4 days—she’s there to dance with more Mettler dancers that she met through various Dance Congresses—I have been eating from a pot of chili she made for me and watching a lot of movies and NBA playoff basketball, and journalizing. Yesterday (Sunday) David came to the house to give Kaia another Shiatsu treatment and this time it went two and a half hours, from 9:30 till noon, which is a half hour longer than last time. Afterwards the three of us had a quick lunch. David went home and Kai and I headed to Foothill’s Mall to see “Iron Man 2.” I saw in the paper this morning that it took in $133 million over the weekend, which is better than the $98 million for the first “Iron Man.” As usual it wasn’t my first choice. I am in a hapless situation because whatever I pick she vetoes because it is depressing and my choices always lack happy endings. I have more of less given up and satisfy myself by being able to spend some daddy time with her.
Number 2 was on a par with the first one, even a little better, as I thought the written script was better and the narrative was more interesting and consistent. However, the film was overcooked when it came to action scenes and to the number of explosions, droids, and two Iron Men, sometimes more, flying around, like comets on their honeymoon. The script was pithy and more to the point and Downey did not mumble like he did in “Sherlock Holmes.” I thought the film resembled a James Bond movie to an extent, especially with some puns, like “hammernoids” and “little prick.” Mickey Rourke made a great villain. His name is Ivan Vanek and he is the physicist son of a Russian inventor who also has come up with a turbo-jet-weapon-heavy- superman suit, giving the lie to Tony Stark’s claim that he had “privatized world peace.” Ivan is on a revenge trip because his father, who dies in his arms as the movie opens, was on to something years back but instead of backing him the government had him deported. So Ivan wants to show Stark his suit is just as capable as his, if not more so.
Ivan doesn’t know it but Stark is seriously ill: his power source buried in his chest in a circular device is toxic to his his blood. Through half the movie he doesn’t know what to do about the problem. But then he gets help from Nick Fury who is with SHIELD, a rogue spy outfit that is led by Samuel Jackson, who dresses all in black and wears a black patch over his left eye, pirate-like. Fury has also secretly installed a Super Girl into Stark enterprises, Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson) who can easily handle a bevy of goons twice her size. There’s a second villain too, Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) who runs a weaponry factory and wants the suit to make money off of, like sell it to the highest bidder, or even to the Pentagon, in the Grand American tradition. Hammer is Capitalistic wheeler-dealer and ruffian in competition with Tony Stark. He teams up with Ivan to defeat Stark. His aim is to corner the market on all the new fangled smart droids and bombs. He is in love with destructive power. Peace is against his principles. Fury has told Stark there is a way to find another power source and with a lot of on-screen hocus-pocus the new formula for the power source is not only found, but it’s even more powerful than the first one.
Following that discovery there is the final shooting match, a Marvel Commix hyperbolic extravaganza. That’s the bomb circus I mentioned earlier. When it’s all over Ivan Vanek has been turned to ashes and Tony Stark gets to kiss Pepper Potts (Gwen Platrow) and wonder about what “Iron Man 3” is going to be like. The Producers drop a hint after the credits have rolled by that there could be Number 3 on line. The scene is New Mexico and it appears to be a round hole in the ground which suggests a Flying Saucer and beings from outer space. Kaia can’t wait. I can.
In contrast to “Iron Man 2” I saw “Tetro,” Francis Ford Coppola’s latest effort, with Vince Gallo in the lead along with Maribel Verdu, who was so memorable in “Y Tu Mama Tambien.” She was Tetro’s woman in a family of festering hate, jealousy, and lies. But she sticks with him through thick and thin, always hoping for the best. Tetro and Miranda have lived together in an apartment in Buenos Aires for several years, without getting married. Out of the blue they are visited by a younger brother who works on a luxury cruise ship with lots of affluent customers. He is just 18 and works as a waiter on board the cruiser. The lad is stuck in port because the ship needs repairs, and they will take four of five days. Tetro acts coldly and indifferently to his younger brother, who doesn’t understand his attitude. They haven’t seen each other in many years and young Bennie has a lot of questions about the family. Tetro hates his father who is a Maestro in a huge Symphony Orchestra, a very successful man. Tetro is also a writer, but one who no longer writes and hates the idea of fame. He is so against fame and any kind of communication that the only way to read his work is with a mirror because, like Leonardo DaVinci, he writes backward. Bennie, the younger brother is also a writer of sorts and when he comes across Tetro’s manuscript in a suitcase he transforms one of his brother’s stories into a stage play which he submits for a prize and wins. When Tetro finds out he is furious and…
It has taken over two hours to get this far in the movie. The narrative seems to going around in circles that move very slowly. There are a few fantasy section involved with two plays. The play and a dance sequence are shot in color, as are all the sequences involved with Tetro’s father (Klaus Maria Brandauer.) I think the scenes with the father work in color, if only to separate him from Tetro and Bennie. But the fantasies are so artificial and stylistically in a different language they strike me as out of place and don’t work. What we know of the father he is a bastard, very unkind to his son, even going so far as to steal his girl friend when she was pregnant by Tetro. The movie concludes with the Father, who Tetro always calls “The Great Man,” is dying but with no family member making any real effort to get to his bedside. There is a dramatic twist right near the end of the picture and I think I’ll leave that out here for those who planned to see the film.
I thought the movie was overlong and repetitive, rather exhausting at two and a half hours. The whole family melodrama could have been compressed and shortened to make its point with more clarity and force. The surprise ending is done pretty well and has some emotional punch to it. I find myself in sympathy with Tetro’s attitude about fame.
David MacKenzie is or was an eccentric Scottish director who in 2009 did “Spread,” a sleazing sexpot movie with little redeeming virtue. In Western Europe the film was called “L.A. Gigolo” or “Boy Toy.” I saw some of MacKenzie’s previous movies, like “The Last Great Wilderness,” his first film and the most eccentric. I also saw “Asylum” with the now deceased Natasha Richardson and Ian McKellan, a story of wild passions in a Mental Hospital with partners that don’t fit. Then there was “Young Adam” with Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton, which also include plenty of odd sex and a strange death. “Spread” is not up to his previous standards, being a sexploitation kind of film starring Ashton Kutcher and Anne Heche. There are many sex scenes where they show everything but genitals. It is as close to porn as Hollywood can get. It’s a remake of “Midnight Cowboy,” with Nikki (Kutcher) doing his imitation of Joe Buck (Jon Voight) coming to town to sweep the ladies of their feet with his charm and sexual prowess. After sleeping with a lot of twenty year old girls he sets his sight on an older woman with a nice place where he can drop anchor for a while. He selects Samantha (Heche) and it goes well for a time, till he becomes interested in another girl, and so on and so forth. He ultimately ends up ends up a delivery boy driving a truck to survive. The movie ends with him feeding a mouse to this huge frog: it is meant to convey what has happened to him. Swallowing the movie would be more difficult.
I also saw “Nine,” that musical treatment of Federico Fellini’s love life, starring Daniel Day Lewis and a bevy of beauties, too many to name. It’s not a movie; it is an event on film, rather boring at that and pretentious. Two musical numbers, one by Penelope Cruz, the other by Kate Hudson, were moderately entertaining. What did think of the movie? Forgetaboutit!!
Finally I completed my second time through all three seasons of “Deadwood,” watching the last two episodes while Sue was gone. Since I have written about the series before, when I was writing for Bookman’s, suffice it to say I enjoyed even more than the first time.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Thursday, May 6, 2010
The Beginning of the Journey Inside
2010_5_04 The Beginning of the Journey Inside
In all the recordings of my life pattern it always starts, not with my youth in Wisconsin or the kind of home life that I had, but later on, during my Junior year at UW in Madison, when by the luck of an impulsive decision I decided to accept a summer job in Oregon as a fire-fighter, and that decision changed everything for me. That was in June 1957. All that went before was mere prelude to what unfolded for me after that. Leaving for the West Coast was the first step on a road to liberation and the pursuit of what I later called “Individuation.” If I hadn’t made that ‘escape’ from my past I tremble to think where I might be at today. If I had listened to Dr. Porzak I would still be working at Hamilton Beach or some other factory in Racine. Porzak was an English instructor who thought I was a dunce with no potential, and like my father and mother, fit only for factory work.
After three years at UW I snagged that unexpected employment in Oregon through the positive intervention of ‘three wise men’ from Pulaski, Wisconsin, a suburb of Green Bay, fellow mates who lived above THE PUB in Madison. I had a job lined up in my home town, working at the same Municipal Swimming pool I had worked at for peanuts the summer before. It would be an easy gig but the idea of spending another boring, uninspiring summer was too much, so I leaped at the chance to do something more adventuresome and daring. It was actually an itch that went deeper than being just a lark—not that I knew that at the time. I was just following my nose while telling myself I’d be back in Madison in September to finish my senior year. I had a hidden need to get away from family and Catholicism, to strike out on my own to find out who I really was or could be.
Another significant factor was a broken romance with a fresh-faced rosy-cheeked pretty girl from a farm in northern Wisconsin. I met her at a dance at the beginning of my sophomore year and we were a number until the middle of the following summer, when she got swept off her feet by some older businessman from Milwaukee who had once given her ride to Racine to see me. It was another chance event that this time ruined a fine romance. I was so devastated that when I went back to classes in the fall of 1956 I hardly felt like dating through that entire year. But the positive side to that was my grades went up and my intellectual capacities came out of the closet. On weekends I either played pool or poker with the Jewish guys from New York who lived with me above THE PUB. My mother knew how unhappy I was and she tended to blame that broken romance for my impulsive decision to head west. It was certainly involved.
Once we were west of Chicago my psyche, sensing an air of liberation on the road, began to stir. I began to entertain a visual fantasy that seemed to come out of the blue as our car sped down the open road. It was my first conscious experience of synchronicity, in this case an inside event being the measure of what was taking place on the outside. Of course it was all pure instinct because I did not know a damn thing about Jung or his Metapsychology. Every time a got a wee bit drowsy in the back seat this recurrent image would appear before my mind’s eye. The image was a dream-like shorthand of my feelings as I moved further away from my 21 year old anchor in Wisconsin. It was a revelation that I grasped right away. What I saw was this: I saw a barrel-chested bald-headed circus strongman who had chains wrapped around his naked chest, and with great strain and muscular effort he kept breaking the chains and throwing his arms out in a gesture of freedom. It was the perfect metaphor for what was happening to me. It was a dramatic affirmation of my decision to split from the Midwest. The image came up spontaneously out of my personal depths—that’s what I mean by instinctive. It came on me like a jack-in-the-box. When we got to Roseburg, Oregon, little did I know I never would go back to Racine or Madison. To visit yes, to live, no.
The second link in this new chain of inner images that was leading me to new growth and a different orientation to inner events was a very powerful dream I had sometime in 1958, a year in which I was working in California and trying to save money to go back to school there, rather than return to the UW in Madison, as I had originally planned. In the dream I am standing outside a bombed out Gothic Cathedral. However, some of the structure was still intact, for example, the brick foundation, most of the apse, and the Rose Window above the altar. It was a nighttime scene, quite dark, except for the Rose Window which was like a beacon in the gloom of the environment. It was as if a light emerged from behind the color wheel of the circular window, like sunlight striking a prism. It was a light that had a mysterious power source and it was the only note of joy and promise in the scene. All the rest was darkness and destruction. Then I began to remove all the broken stones inside the foundation and made triangular pyramidal piles around the outside of the building. I told myself this had been a sacred precinct, a functional and thriving space now in total ruin and I felt I had to reorganize it, return it to its previous glory. I stood there pondering where to begin this restoration project…and that’s when I woke up.
I had “lost my faith” in Madison, as I had stopped going to church in the winter of 1957, but, probably through travel and escaping the clutches of family and priests, I had become open enough to receive a message from the unconscious, from a new source of authority inside myself. And, given the nature of the symbols and the crisis they projected, I felt in contact with what I would later recognize as the Archetypal Psyche, the ground of being that would feed me images and clues to progression over the next several years. This eloquent dream had come on the heels of my rejection of the Roman Church, the religion of my youth. It clearly signaled that I was free of its strictures and weight; I was liberated from its oppression and sin-philosophy, but at the same time it showed me that I may have become a non-believer, but that I was no atheist. I may have abandoned the institution of Christianity but a spark of neutral spirituality was left aglow in the hearth of my soul. A spirit quest was still alive and breathing, even if it did not take center stage for several years, as I had to beef-up my ego first. Nonetheless, I felt my future task had been laid out for me and that was Restoration of the Temple. Now by temple I wasn’t referring to building a new edifice, a brick and mortar church, but more a Temple of the Mind, something that could be embodied in my art, a Gnosis or reflection of the self-knowledge I might attain over time. I would eventually seek to transform the rubble of the old religion into something eclectic but quite different than the Faith that fewer and fewer people were looking to for guidance and salvation.
The dream also was a link with what I came to call my “Toys in the Attic Syndrome.” My creative play as a youngster is a river that feeds into what I am doing now. (My education is like an Arch through which the primary influences flow.) The Attic on our William Street house was my playground as a kid and mine alone. It was a big open space my parents used mainly for storage. I spent many an hour up there by myself playing with some toy red bricks which looked like real construction brick, not like the plastic Legos of today. The foundation of the cathedral in the dream was brick and Hamilton Beach, the factory where my dad worked for 35 years and where I had worked a couple of summers while still in High School, was wholly a red brick complex. The attic and those red toy bricks were the primary tools of my childish imagination, along with many pencil drawings I did in those days. ‘Toys in the Attic’ were the matrix of my lonely creativity. The attic was also the context for my sexual growth, as it was the space where I learned to masturbate. So one could say I suppose that the space was a real auto-erotic boon in more ways than one.
A final word about the Rose Window is in order. That glowing circle was my initial experience, totally spontaneous and self-generated, of an inner Mandala, something that has become a staple form in my visual vocabulary. There will be many further discussions of the importance and meaning of the Mandala in my Art and life.
In all the recordings of my life pattern it always starts, not with my youth in Wisconsin or the kind of home life that I had, but later on, during my Junior year at UW in Madison, when by the luck of an impulsive decision I decided to accept a summer job in Oregon as a fire-fighter, and that decision changed everything for me. That was in June 1957. All that went before was mere prelude to what unfolded for me after that. Leaving for the West Coast was the first step on a road to liberation and the pursuit of what I later called “Individuation.” If I hadn’t made that ‘escape’ from my past I tremble to think where I might be at today. If I had listened to Dr. Porzak I would still be working at Hamilton Beach or some other factory in Racine. Porzak was an English instructor who thought I was a dunce with no potential, and like my father and mother, fit only for factory work.
After three years at UW I snagged that unexpected employment in Oregon through the positive intervention of ‘three wise men’ from Pulaski, Wisconsin, a suburb of Green Bay, fellow mates who lived above THE PUB in Madison. I had a job lined up in my home town, working at the same Municipal Swimming pool I had worked at for peanuts the summer before. It would be an easy gig but the idea of spending another boring, uninspiring summer was too much, so I leaped at the chance to do something more adventuresome and daring. It was actually an itch that went deeper than being just a lark—not that I knew that at the time. I was just following my nose while telling myself I’d be back in Madison in September to finish my senior year. I had a hidden need to get away from family and Catholicism, to strike out on my own to find out who I really was or could be.
Another significant factor was a broken romance with a fresh-faced rosy-cheeked pretty girl from a farm in northern Wisconsin. I met her at a dance at the beginning of my sophomore year and we were a number until the middle of the following summer, when she got swept off her feet by some older businessman from Milwaukee who had once given her ride to Racine to see me. It was another chance event that this time ruined a fine romance. I was so devastated that when I went back to classes in the fall of 1956 I hardly felt like dating through that entire year. But the positive side to that was my grades went up and my intellectual capacities came out of the closet. On weekends I either played pool or poker with the Jewish guys from New York who lived with me above THE PUB. My mother knew how unhappy I was and she tended to blame that broken romance for my impulsive decision to head west. It was certainly involved.
Once we were west of Chicago my psyche, sensing an air of liberation on the road, began to stir. I began to entertain a visual fantasy that seemed to come out of the blue as our car sped down the open road. It was my first conscious experience of synchronicity, in this case an inside event being the measure of what was taking place on the outside. Of course it was all pure instinct because I did not know a damn thing about Jung or his Metapsychology. Every time a got a wee bit drowsy in the back seat this recurrent image would appear before my mind’s eye. The image was a dream-like shorthand of my feelings as I moved further away from my 21 year old anchor in Wisconsin. It was a revelation that I grasped right away. What I saw was this: I saw a barrel-chested bald-headed circus strongman who had chains wrapped around his naked chest, and with great strain and muscular effort he kept breaking the chains and throwing his arms out in a gesture of freedom. It was the perfect metaphor for what was happening to me. It was a dramatic affirmation of my decision to split from the Midwest. The image came up spontaneously out of my personal depths—that’s what I mean by instinctive. It came on me like a jack-in-the-box. When we got to Roseburg, Oregon, little did I know I never would go back to Racine or Madison. To visit yes, to live, no.
The second link in this new chain of inner images that was leading me to new growth and a different orientation to inner events was a very powerful dream I had sometime in 1958, a year in which I was working in California and trying to save money to go back to school there, rather than return to the UW in Madison, as I had originally planned. In the dream I am standing outside a bombed out Gothic Cathedral. However, some of the structure was still intact, for example, the brick foundation, most of the apse, and the Rose Window above the altar. It was a nighttime scene, quite dark, except for the Rose Window which was like a beacon in the gloom of the environment. It was as if a light emerged from behind the color wheel of the circular window, like sunlight striking a prism. It was a light that had a mysterious power source and it was the only note of joy and promise in the scene. All the rest was darkness and destruction. Then I began to remove all the broken stones inside the foundation and made triangular pyramidal piles around the outside of the building. I told myself this had been a sacred precinct, a functional and thriving space now in total ruin and I felt I had to reorganize it, return it to its previous glory. I stood there pondering where to begin this restoration project…and that’s when I woke up.
I had “lost my faith” in Madison, as I had stopped going to church in the winter of 1957, but, probably through travel and escaping the clutches of family and priests, I had become open enough to receive a message from the unconscious, from a new source of authority inside myself. And, given the nature of the symbols and the crisis they projected, I felt in contact with what I would later recognize as the Archetypal Psyche, the ground of being that would feed me images and clues to progression over the next several years. This eloquent dream had come on the heels of my rejection of the Roman Church, the religion of my youth. It clearly signaled that I was free of its strictures and weight; I was liberated from its oppression and sin-philosophy, but at the same time it showed me that I may have become a non-believer, but that I was no atheist. I may have abandoned the institution of Christianity but a spark of neutral spirituality was left aglow in the hearth of my soul. A spirit quest was still alive and breathing, even if it did not take center stage for several years, as I had to beef-up my ego first. Nonetheless, I felt my future task had been laid out for me and that was Restoration of the Temple. Now by temple I wasn’t referring to building a new edifice, a brick and mortar church, but more a Temple of the Mind, something that could be embodied in my art, a Gnosis or reflection of the self-knowledge I might attain over time. I would eventually seek to transform the rubble of the old religion into something eclectic but quite different than the Faith that fewer and fewer people were looking to for guidance and salvation.
The dream also was a link with what I came to call my “Toys in the Attic Syndrome.” My creative play as a youngster is a river that feeds into what I am doing now. (My education is like an Arch through which the primary influences flow.) The Attic on our William Street house was my playground as a kid and mine alone. It was a big open space my parents used mainly for storage. I spent many an hour up there by myself playing with some toy red bricks which looked like real construction brick, not like the plastic Legos of today. The foundation of the cathedral in the dream was brick and Hamilton Beach, the factory where my dad worked for 35 years and where I had worked a couple of summers while still in High School, was wholly a red brick complex. The attic and those red toy bricks were the primary tools of my childish imagination, along with many pencil drawings I did in those days. ‘Toys in the Attic’ were the matrix of my lonely creativity. The attic was also the context for my sexual growth, as it was the space where I learned to masturbate. So one could say I suppose that the space was a real auto-erotic boon in more ways than one.
A final word about the Rose Window is in order. That glowing circle was my initial experience, totally spontaneous and self-generated, of an inner Mandala, something that has become a staple form in my visual vocabulary. There will be many further discussions of the importance and meaning of the Mandala in my Art and life.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
The Death and Triumph of Chinese Gordon
2010_5_01 Chinese Gordon at Khartoum
At times I could forget what books I had brought home from my job at Bookman’s Used Books in Tucson. I would pick something on a whim, bring it home, put it on a shelf, and promptly forget I had it; then months or years later I’d run across it just when I needed it. It’s funny how that works. For example, I had totally forgotten that I had obtained one of Olivia Manning’s nonfiction books, THE REMARKABLE EXPEDITION, which had gotten buried in an obscure corner of the history section of my library. I had read Manning’s fine novel, THE BALKAN TRILOGY a few years ago. I relocated THE REMARKABLE EXPEDITION just as I was doing some reading on Egypt and the Middle East in the 19th century-- to be specific, THE DEVIL’S GAME by Robert Dreyfuss and THREE EMPIRES OF THE NILE by Dominic Green. Manning’s book was about the search for Dr. Livingston by H.M. Stanley, an ordeal that lasted five years; but the first chapter dealt with General Gordon, who had become known as “Chinese” Gordon because he had served in China. (Actually I ran across THE REMARKABLE EXPEDITION and delved into it because I was looking for information about H.M. Stanley who was the great-great-grandfather of Richard Stanley a South African filmmaker who I was interested in in 2007.) But once I started reading the first Chapter I became fascinated with Manning’s narrative about the encounter between General Gordon and the Madhi, the promised one of Islam, much like the Jewish Messiah. The Madhi personally admired Gordon for his courage and spirituality; but he was also the British Commander in the Sudan. My original interest in the confrontation between the two men was the 1966 movie called “Khartoum,” with Lawrence Olivier playing The Madhi and Charleston Heston, playing Gordon. Their joint impact on me was great, staying with me for many years.
However, movies don’t always jibe with the historical record. In the movie Gordon dies at Khartoum with all his medals on his chest and dressed in his resplendent uniform; he perishes by thrown spear in the his side, like Christ was penetrated by a sharp blade as he hung on the cross. Well, it was true he did have all his medals on and he was clad in his dress uniform. Indeed, he looked so impressive it stopped the invaders for a minute as they gazed wide-eyed up at him elevated on some steps, as if he was a Deity they should respect, as he peered down at them, as if they were his unruly children. But in fact the thing that brought him down was a shot to the brow, not a spear. He died instantly. His head was cut off and put on a pole and brought to the tent of The Madhi, a man named Mohammed Ahmed who had the requisite mole on his cheek, which according to tradition was to be the identifying mark of The Madhi. Gordon’s body was thrown in the river to be devoured by crocodiles. What followed his death was a bloody slaughter, one of the worst in history, which was avoided by the movie, which should be no surprise. 4000 people in Khartoum were hacked to death and cut into pieces over a six hour period. I have tried to picture to myself what the executioners looked like after that particular labor. They had to be covered in blood and bits of flesh, plus being exhausted. But the Madhi Army wasn’t through as there were another 6000 that had been captured earlier and they too had to be killed. All of it was cold blooded murder. The massacre somehow received religious sanction. The only people who survived were some women who were divided up among the generals of the Madhi Army. Women in most Muslim countries always end up with the short end of the stick. I think of the Iranian film I wrote about recently, about that stoning of a woman falsely accused by a gaggle of men eager to kill her.
As for Gordon he posthumously became a Christian martyr and a Victorian icon/hero, celebrated for his courage and defiance against hopeless odds. Two columns of soldiers arrived two days after the final battle at Khartoum. Some say the PM, Gladstone, told them not to rush. He was not an admirer of Gordon who often ignored what his superiors told him to do. In a way he reminds me, minus the religious passion, of General George Custer, a man waiting to die in order to be ranked a hero/leader for his kind and time. A painter named George William Jay painted a heroic picture of Gordon in 1885. He stands at the top of the stairs, as was reported at the time of his death, where he defiantly faced the man about to launch his spear at him. Joy titled his painting, “Gordon’s Last Stand,” which again seems to echo Custer’s path to the Hall of Fame.
The Chinese Gordon of Khartoum certainly took a heroic, noble pose, and wanted to be seen and measured by that standard, but at bottom he was a complex man who was riddled by self doubt and self-loathing. He was also in very poor health. During his battles with slave traders he endangered his own health. His legs, for example, were scabbed over due to riding so much on the back of a camel. He was plagued by fevers, prickly heat, boils and recurrent bouts of malaria. He had a tendency to drink too much, as he was fond of brandy. It eventually damaged his liver. He smoked too much which bothered his heart and gave him chest pains. At times his arms would experience numbness. It’s surprising he never had a stroke.
He also had his personal demons. Some say he was a boy-oriented sexually but given the strictures and rigors of his faith he probably was a would-be pederast. In any case, he never did marry and died at age 51. At times he was out of his head, being pursued by furies only he saw. He was prone to panic attacks which made him dizzy. And he often saw himself as a worthless sinner. “I have brought it on myself, for I have prayed to God to humble me to the dust, and to visit the sins of Egypt and the Sudan on my head. It would be little to say, take my life for theirs, for I do earnestly desire a speedy death. I am weary of the continual conflict with my atrocious life.”
He got his wish, instant death, by the grace of a bullet to the brain.
At times I could forget what books I had brought home from my job at Bookman’s Used Books in Tucson. I would pick something on a whim, bring it home, put it on a shelf, and promptly forget I had it; then months or years later I’d run across it just when I needed it. It’s funny how that works. For example, I had totally forgotten that I had obtained one of Olivia Manning’s nonfiction books, THE REMARKABLE EXPEDITION, which had gotten buried in an obscure corner of the history section of my library. I had read Manning’s fine novel, THE BALKAN TRILOGY a few years ago. I relocated THE REMARKABLE EXPEDITION just as I was doing some reading on Egypt and the Middle East in the 19th century-- to be specific, THE DEVIL’S GAME by Robert Dreyfuss and THREE EMPIRES OF THE NILE by Dominic Green. Manning’s book was about the search for Dr. Livingston by H.M. Stanley, an ordeal that lasted five years; but the first chapter dealt with General Gordon, who had become known as “Chinese” Gordon because he had served in China. (Actually I ran across THE REMARKABLE EXPEDITION and delved into it because I was looking for information about H.M. Stanley who was the great-great-grandfather of Richard Stanley a South African filmmaker who I was interested in in 2007.) But once I started reading the first Chapter I became fascinated with Manning’s narrative about the encounter between General Gordon and the Madhi, the promised one of Islam, much like the Jewish Messiah. The Madhi personally admired Gordon for his courage and spirituality; but he was also the British Commander in the Sudan. My original interest in the confrontation between the two men was the 1966 movie called “Khartoum,” with Lawrence Olivier playing The Madhi and Charleston Heston, playing Gordon. Their joint impact on me was great, staying with me for many years.
However, movies don’t always jibe with the historical record. In the movie Gordon dies at Khartoum with all his medals on his chest and dressed in his resplendent uniform; he perishes by thrown spear in the his side, like Christ was penetrated by a sharp blade as he hung on the cross. Well, it was true he did have all his medals on and he was clad in his dress uniform. Indeed, he looked so impressive it stopped the invaders for a minute as they gazed wide-eyed up at him elevated on some steps, as if he was a Deity they should respect, as he peered down at them, as if they were his unruly children. But in fact the thing that brought him down was a shot to the brow, not a spear. He died instantly. His head was cut off and put on a pole and brought to the tent of The Madhi, a man named Mohammed Ahmed who had the requisite mole on his cheek, which according to tradition was to be the identifying mark of The Madhi. Gordon’s body was thrown in the river to be devoured by crocodiles. What followed his death was a bloody slaughter, one of the worst in history, which was avoided by the movie, which should be no surprise. 4000 people in Khartoum were hacked to death and cut into pieces over a six hour period. I have tried to picture to myself what the executioners looked like after that particular labor. They had to be covered in blood and bits of flesh, plus being exhausted. But the Madhi Army wasn’t through as there were another 6000 that had been captured earlier and they too had to be killed. All of it was cold blooded murder. The massacre somehow received religious sanction. The only people who survived were some women who were divided up among the generals of the Madhi Army. Women in most Muslim countries always end up with the short end of the stick. I think of the Iranian film I wrote about recently, about that stoning of a woman falsely accused by a gaggle of men eager to kill her.
As for Gordon he posthumously became a Christian martyr and a Victorian icon/hero, celebrated for his courage and defiance against hopeless odds. Two columns of soldiers arrived two days after the final battle at Khartoum. Some say the PM, Gladstone, told them not to rush. He was not an admirer of Gordon who often ignored what his superiors told him to do. In a way he reminds me, minus the religious passion, of General George Custer, a man waiting to die in order to be ranked a hero/leader for his kind and time. A painter named George William Jay painted a heroic picture of Gordon in 1885. He stands at the top of the stairs, as was reported at the time of his death, where he defiantly faced the man about to launch his spear at him. Joy titled his painting, “Gordon’s Last Stand,” which again seems to echo Custer’s path to the Hall of Fame.
The Chinese Gordon of Khartoum certainly took a heroic, noble pose, and wanted to be seen and measured by that standard, but at bottom he was a complex man who was riddled by self doubt and self-loathing. He was also in very poor health. During his battles with slave traders he endangered his own health. His legs, for example, were scabbed over due to riding so much on the back of a camel. He was plagued by fevers, prickly heat, boils and recurrent bouts of malaria. He had a tendency to drink too much, as he was fond of brandy. It eventually damaged his liver. He smoked too much which bothered his heart and gave him chest pains. At times his arms would experience numbness. It’s surprising he never had a stroke.
He also had his personal demons. Some say he was a boy-oriented sexually but given the strictures and rigors of his faith he probably was a would-be pederast. In any case, he never did marry and died at age 51. At times he was out of his head, being pursued by furies only he saw. He was prone to panic attacks which made him dizzy. And he often saw himself as a worthless sinner. “I have brought it on myself, for I have prayed to God to humble me to the dust, and to visit the sins of Egypt and the Sudan on my head. It would be little to say, take my life for theirs, for I do earnestly desire a speedy death. I am weary of the continual conflict with my atrocious life.”
He got his wish, instant death, by the grace of a bullet to the brain.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
