Rabbit-Hole News: Pat Robertson's Illuminati Theories, Bagram Batman, Bigfoot

THE ILLUMINATI:

Televangelist Pat Robertson decided yesterday that the public needed more of his pearls of wisdom, blaming the Bavarian Illuminati for gay marriage:

"It has been said that those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to live them again. If you go back in history to the French Revolution, there was a thrust spurred by the writings of the group called the Illuminati to destroy the family, to destroy the state, to destroy capitalism and to destroy the church."

Robertson's rantings will in no way be used by the media to make all alternative news/history enthusiasts look like raving lunatics. Oh wait, they totally were.


ALEISTER CROWLEY:

Along similar lines as the Robertson piece, conservative site Big Hollywood has picked up the OTO/Peaches Geldof/Jay-Z story from the Daily Mail -- though never mentioning the word "Illuminati." Crowley cited as sex-crazed maniac, though; cool to see that media still buys Uncle Al's press after all these decades. Makes you wonder if the "mainstream" conservatives (and I know that's a stretch when referring to Robertson) are starting to overtly adopt the Illuminati/Satanist narrative.


THE DARK KNIGHT:

Because our soldiers really need more of the blending of fantasy and reality in order to keep a healthy mindset on the field and back at home, a series of Army PSAs called "The Bagram Batman" teach soldiers how to be more prepared. Because there is nothing less "triggering" than the Chris Nolan version of Batman.


BIGFOOT:
Is this Bigfoot's foot? Or a bear paw?

If it was Bigfoot's foot that would be really cool. Let's all hope it's Bigfoot.


META-NARRATIVE:
This podcast by The Higherside Chats, interviewing author Kent Bain, contains a little something for everyone: 9/11, Sandy Hook, Hunger Games black magick, Baphomet, and, of course, The Dark Knight. I'll be looking at Bain's (Bain/Bane sync LOL) theory about "The Great Gatsby" in a future post.

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"Olympus Has Fallen" And The New Patriotism Narrative

It's sometimes so bizarre that I can't help think there is something more to it.

Just as "Olympus Has Fallen" -- a movie about evil Koreans bombing and taking over the White House -- does gangbusters at the box office, North Korea suggests, through a conveniently placed bulletin board in a war-room photo, that they are readying missiles for Washington, D.C.:

How weird is that? Does art represent life, or does life reflect art?

What is the psychological impact on an American citizen from watching "Olympus Has Fallen" and then having this news plastered all over our media right afterwards?

"Olympus Has Fallen" took in $30.5 million in its opening last weekend

Some might theorize that this makes the American people more fearful and paranoid -- but I would offer that the prevailing feeling throughout the public, at least according to social media, is one of gung-ho patriotic jingoism -- of the "well then we'll just bomb them into the stone age" variety.

I might also humbly suggest that such an instinctual and joyously defensive appeal to said patriotic impulse distracts the populace from such domestic issues such as financial crisis -- instead, giving people a shared threat to rally against. Some say that Kim Jong-un looks as if he just stepped out of central casting for a James Bond movie.

Let's look at the cast for "Olympus Has Fallen," for there are several actors involved who have subtextual meaning as it relates to discussion and their previous movie roles.

The film's protagonist is played by Gerard Butler -- who of course played the mighty warrior King Leonidas in "300." Leonidas is the ulitmate macho war-dude, rallying the "troops" to battle.

The president is portrayed by Aaron Eckhart, part of the symbolically-loaded Christopher Nolan "Dark Knight" trilogy. POTUS has the name Benjamin Asher, which has very Biblical overtones; both Benjamin and Asher are part of the Tribes of Israel.

One person the president in "Olympus Has Fallen" does NOT seem to allude to is our current president, Barack Obama. Often, movies such as this will choose an "analogue" to the sitting president. But this does not seem to be President Benjamin Asher's function. Asher seems to function as some sort of idealistic character straight out of the Good Book; functioning in what is essentially an Apocalyptic film as the representation of the United States as a "promised land" that needs defending from the Philistines.

HOWEVER, when Asher is incapacitated in the Korean takeover, Morgan Freeman's character, Speaker Allan Trumbull, is made Acting President. Freeman also played the U.S. president in "Deep Impact," alluding to the recent spate of asteroid paranoia that has recently filled the news.

While Freeman resonates both the President-During-The-Apocalypse symbol as well as a possible "stand-in" for our own president, I would also suggest that in the bigger scheme of things, he also resonates a paternalistic, transcendent, "God" figure (as he literally was in "Bruce Almighty).

And Freeman, of course, was also a figure in the Nolan "Dark Knight" movies, especially the third one in which his character was the creator of a bomb that Bane hijacks and threatens to use on Gotham; as Kim Jong-un threatens to do to the U.S. as present.

All-in-all, rather than being a true eschatological movie as "Deep Impact" or "2012," "Olympus Has Fallen" is more a narrative designed to rally the American public against the outside Enemy -- as the successful "Red Dawn" remake has done (featuring the North Koreans), as the upcoming movie "Iron Man 3" will do (with the Asian Mandarin as villain), and as the immanent movie "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" will do (swapping out a specific ethnic group for the generic evil of "Cobra").

In truth, we have moved out of the end-of-the-world cycle of films, spurred on by the 2012 prophecy, and are travelling into a "we can win this war dammit we are Americans!" phase; the phase of "let's bomb them into the stone age!"

And why is this? As I've mentioned before, this appeal to patriotism distracts the public from economic turmoil at home. It also more helpfully "defines" what it means to be a Patriot; taking control of the word and concept from various Constitutionalist groups etc. labelled as "fringe."

In short: this narrative, running through both news media and entertainment, attempts to push the United States out of the "paranoid," untrusting-of-government periods of the 70s, 90s, and 10s and into something more manageable. Witness the 80s and "Aughts" -- both eras where the U.S. have been threatened with, in the latter even hit by, attacks from abroad.

And if "Olympus Has Fallen" doesn't float your boat, you can check out the #1 movie in America, about cavemen.

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Aaron Swartz Wrote His Last Blog Post On "The Dark Knight"

I haven't even been able to pull together coherent thoughts about the recent suicide of this Internet activist who was literally harassed by the Feds to death, but I was shocked to find that the last post on his blog was a review of "The Dark Knight". Here are the last two paragraphs of "What Happens In The Dark Knight" (emphasis mine):

"The movie concludes by emphasizing that Batman must become the villain, but as usual it never stops to notice that the Joker is actually the hero. But even though his various games only have one innocent casualty, he’s much too crazy to be a viable role model for Batman. His inspired chaos destroys the criminals, but it also terrorizes the population. Thanks to Batman, society doesn’t devolve into a self-interested war of all-against-all, as he apparently expects it to, but that doesn’t mean anyone enjoys the trials.

Thus Master Wayne is left without solutions. Out of options, it’s no wonder the series ends with his staged suicide."

It is always quite interesting to me how iconic and primal this Christopher Nolan trilogy of Batman films are -- how they impact people in such a deeply profound way, and have captured the zeitgeist of our world in such an uncanny fashion.

As for what happened to Swartz -- all the harassment that was done to him will no doubt make him a martyr to the cause, and only inspire more people to become Internet activists.

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"Lone Ranger" Movie Poster Looks Like "The Crow"

Uhhhhhh...just from a purely unfounded, superstitious, synchromystic point of view, duplicating this symbology (purposely or subliminally) just doesn't seem like a good idea, especially with morbid events already being associated with this movie: "Lone Ranger Crew Member Drowns On Set Of Johnny Depp Movie"

Bonus: If we look at the initial Joker teaser for "The Dark Knight," we see the same imagery again -- eyes and bird/bat shape -- but this time, separated out:

What is it about this particular symbolism -- bird-figure and eyes superimposed -- that leads it to be used so much, and attract such weird energy?

Horus, maybe?

UPDATE: Oh, I get it now...the "look" of Johnny Depp in "The Lone Ranger" is taken from a painting called "I Am Crow":

Depp, of course, filled in for his late friend Heath Ledger in the movie "The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus":

Oh, and here's the crow tattoo Depp received on September of this year, in specific tribute to the original Crow movie from 1994:

UPDATE 2: The Hollywood Reporter compares the image on the "Lone Ranger" poster to that of the Joker in "Dark Knight:

"...And if it looks familiar, ask yourself one question: Why So Serious? Yes, the first poster for the film features Johnny Depp's eyes and face mask makeup in a wild smear reminiscent of The Joker's appearance on The Dark Knight posters back in 2008."

It's interesting to me that the first connection THR would make is to Heath Ledger's Joker, not the Crow. I saw the connections to both, but it seems more obvious with Crow. Either way, it's still quite interesting how entwined the symbolism and stars from these 3 movies are.

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