Sync Webs: Lincoln, Obama, and The Amazing Spider-Man

The current hot political meme buzzing through the news outlets at the moment is Lincoln/Obama, as exemplified by this Drudge Report headline:

Google Obama + Lincoln right now, and it's in every news article: "Is this Obama's Lincoln moment?"

This connection has been going on pretty much since before his presidency, but has taken a sharp uptick since the last election, and especially over the last several days or so -- weeks before Obama's inauguration ceremony. Of course, the shadow of Steven Spielberg's current "Lincoln" movie hangs over the entire thing. And it's a connection that the Obama administration and press team themselves have cultivated (much like the Superman/Obama meme).

This reflects the current zeitgeist gripping the U.S. right now -- A Nation Divided, and states wanting to secede. But you'd also have to be pretty blind to see the other subtext about this connection.

And that makes me nervous.

The Drudge Report, one of the all-time masters of matching primal symbology with headlines to subliminally influence readers and get away with the otherwise taboo, is currently running this headline:

This image/word combination can be unpacked as follows:

1. Inflame already inflamed gun-owners currently terrified about losing their guns due to tragedies like Newtown.

2. Use the iconography of the Revolutionary War to stir up the Tea Party crowd. Obama's name linked to the image of the Redcoats, enemy of the "Patriots."

3. Use the even deeper subconscious imagery of people shooting weapons + the word "Obama" + "There Will Be Resistance."

It's my belief that such image/word combinations get "shuffled" within the brains of already unstable people. It's a similar situation to the "Dark Knight Rises" phenomenon and that business with James Holmes.

Also, from a metaphysical standpoint, such a deep identification with another public figure with such a tragic story is not a good idea. While Abraham Lincoln is a potent and much-beloved icon, the fact that he was assassinated makes purposely associating with him -- especially when you are already getting regular death threats on a regular basis -- dicey.

As an added passel of syncs, a writer in the comic book community who has recently "killed" Peter Parker/Spider-Man has also been on the receiving end of an unprecidented amount of death threats, leading to him essentially going into hiding and comparing himself to Salman Rushdie:

Let's recall this recent viral photo of Obama and Spidey:

...and also this famous comic from several years ago:

The Peter Parker of a different Marvel Comics "Earth" was killed off last year, replaced with a young Spider-Man of color -- setting off another mind 'splosion among certain groups of people (some of whom claimed this was all part of a sinister "plot" by Obama):

From "The Drudge Report"

Of course, in this particular Marvel Universe this year, their President Obama analogue has perished -- along with a good chunk of Washington D.C.:

This leads to a storyline in which first some sort of education official or someone similarly down the chain of command is made president (mirroring "Battlestar Galactica"), finally to be replaced by Captain America himself in a "special election" (a.k.a. not really any election):

Lastly, let's return to the death of another icon who has been connected with Obama -- Superman. That event "happened" in 1992, at which time that George H.W. Bush was president. It was a death of a comic book hero that, like the current Spider-Man story, made national news:

Bush Senior was recently at death's door, followed by the death of his Commander of U.S. Central Command during the Gulf War, Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr.:

So we currently have weird parallels to both the U.S. Civil War era, and the early 1990s/Gulf War era.

Is there one more sync or resonance I can squeeze out of all these elements? Here's just a few comic-related images:

Well, here's covers featuring Spider-Man's fellow superhero Deadpool, in a story about him fighting a zombie version of Abraham Lincoln:

This comic that will be released on January 16, about 5 days before the U.S. presidential inauguration.

And just for shits and giggles, here's a shot of Deadpool capturing Osama Bin Laden:



...and here's Obama doing the same thing in the Comics:





Here's the mutant super-group "X-Presidents," inclusing Bush Senior, fighting the menace of Communism, robots, and Reptillians:



Obama resonator Lincoln appears with both Obama resonator Spider-Man and "Obama Replacement" (in the "Ultimate" Marvel Universe) Captain America in this special Presidents Day comic:



And lastly, since I have an obsession with Astronaut iconography, I'll leave you with this:

Because icons never really die.

Stephen's Girls: Carrie White and Wendy Torrance

This painting by Eric White really spoke to me in a deep, archetypal way, based off the 1977 Robert Altman film "3 Women":

It features two actresses who play starring roles in movies based off of Stephen King novels: Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall. I came across this painting at a point in my life where I was just "reactivating" my novel that "wrote itself" -- a book about two wildly different female protagonists who can never meet each other, or the world will end. The "hero" of the novel is assigned the task of keeping the paths of these two women from diverging -- but he himself is "unstuck" in both time and "self," finding himself suddenly assuming the lives and "roles" of other people.

Spacek and Duvall in "3 Women" play similarly opposite characters as the ones in my book -- both named Mildred -- who meet and start a bizarre chain of events ending in them literally "shifting" personalities. We have the idea here that the Self is not static, but a dynamic, perhaps even unstable and permeable entity.

Spacek of course plays Carrie White in "Carrie" (1976) and Duvall is Wendy Torrance in "The Shining" (1980) -- two meek and passive women unaware of the great personal power within them:

Both Carrie and Wendy suffer their own personal apocalypses in their respective movies, one ending in fire:

...and one in  ice:

The characters of Carrie and Wendy also bring to mind that of fairy-tale heroines.

Carrie White resonates Snow White who resonates the fairy-tale of "Snow White and Rose Red", also about two girls with polar-opposite personalities:

"Rose Red" will also be the name of a 2002 Stephen King miniseries featuring an Oregon mansion very much like the Overlook from "The Shining":

"Wendy" brings to mind the heroine from "Peter Pan" -- Wendy Torrance having the unenviable task of dealing with her husband that "won't grow up" (in other words, stop his dreams of writing and get a real job), Jack. Fans of the animated movie "Rise of the Guardians" have pointed out the similarities between Disney's Peter Pan and "ROTG's" Jack Frost:

Of course, Jack Torrance at the end of "Shining" literally becomes a sort of "Jack Frost":

Robin Williams plays another Peter Pan-like boy-man who can't grow up in the 1996 movie "Jack":

Williams co-starred opposite Duvall in the 1980 Altman movie "Popeye":

During the production of the film, Duvall showed Williams her collection of antique fairy-tale books; she felt he would be perfect to play "The Frog Prince," and soon after started a cable TV series for children called "Faerie Tale Theatre":

Meanwhile, Sissy Spacek will go on to play the crazy mother of Carrie-like fright-child Samara in "The Ring 2":

Samara plays an "unstuck" soul who has gone beyond concepts of space, time, and even Self -- she has also transcended the movie/video to reach out at the viewer in a personal manner reflecting that of the synchromysticist and various syncs from pop-culture:

The "soul" of the Carrie/Wendy Spacek/Duvall archetypes will  flash-forwards and -backwards to 1977, to be "synthesized" in Altman's "3 Women" -- with the help of the pregnant "third woman," Willie, portrayed by Janice Rule:

Willie is a silent artist of primal, savage murals that look like the Dreamtime of the Aborigines -- a medium of the subconscious by which the two Mildreds can synthesize themselves and loosen their definitions of Self:

In a neat Altman/Stanley Kubrick sync, note the similarities between Willie's mural and this scene from "2001" (apes congregating around the stargate symbol):

In the end, the two Mildreds and the one Willie of "3 Women" syncretize into a functional Whole -- in effect, forming the Triple Goddess (which I elaborate on here). In order for this to happen, the Mildreds have to pass through the stargate/reality point and go where Self is permeable and subjective:

Altman himself based "3 Women" on a dream he had, one that he admitted he didn't fully understand.