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#love the religious themes. but ALSO. icarus imagery
raayllum · 5 months
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Remembered that you like exploring religious themes in TDP, and I just had a thought:
I was trying to figure out what it was about the connection between Callum's two arcanums that was giving me weird déjà vu vibes, and then I remembered that, in the biblical creation story, the sky and the sea were created on the same day-- the second day. And not only that, but all of the animals of the air and ocean (birds, fish, etc) were also created on the same day-- the fifth day.
Honestly, what Callum's arcanums remind me the most of is the myth of Icarus. *puts myth hat on cause this has been my favourite myth since childhood*
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(Full edits here & here)
Specifically, Icarus is given wings, soars to new heights / too close to the sun, and then plummets to his death in the ocean. Now, the Book 2 novelization references the myth of Icarus quite clearly in its prologue, harkening to a past in-universe myth that a young girl defies by flying successfully, and clearly meant to invoke Callum unlocking the sky arcanum later in S2. Wings and flight and freedom and all that - unlimited potential
As someone who's always loved the myth of Icarus, it always fascinated me that in public consciousness, we only remember how Icarus did fail, and the fall itself, rather than how he could've fell and where he ultimately ended up. He was told not to fly too close to the sun or the ocean, and to pick the middle rode (moderation) in order to make it safely home. It's a cautionary tale about how we shouldn't fly too high or too low, but given that humans tend to be more self destructive with grandiosity and the fact it's the one that had actual consequences, I suppose it's unsurprising that the "Icarus flew too close to the sun" is what gets remembered universally.
I expected a sort of Icarus arc for Callum regarding magic the second he got his wings, tbh. Like... you just don't give a character who's already sometimes too persistent/curious/fixated for his own good and give him wings unless you want to invoke some of that imagery, and given that arc 2 (s4-s6) had to ultimately be a tragedy, it made sense to me that Callum would, well, Fall before rising again stronger than ever before. A broader arc that could parallel Ezran taking the throne, abdicating, and then becoming king again, or Soren's own restoration arc, if you will, within S3 or S1-S3 itself
AKA I was very hyped for the fact the season was called Ocean and that S4 had perfectly set up the pieces for Callum to have his first 'Fall' arc (cause S6 has to be worse, y'know? For 11th hour reasons). The fact that Callum goes from highest highs through magic & out of his love for Rayla (3x09 with wings) to current lowest lows through the same methods and same reasons (5x08) that's symbolized by unlocking the Ocean arcanum? Chef's fucking kiss, lemme tell you. Bonus edit here
That said, I don't think any of this was necessarily intentionally that specific, nor the even more specific parallel I'm about to lay out, but it tickled me pink so I'm including it
Callum flies too close to the sun with magic (specifically dark magic) in 2x07 and it comes back to haunt him. He flies too close to the sun in going to the Sunfire library in 5x04 and staying there past the time he should because he wants to help Rayla. Then he unlocks his freedom (literally) and connects to the Ocean arcanum, but this won't necessarily save him, ultimately, either.
But yeah. Sun and sky and ocean. Rise and flight and fall. We love a little Icarus boy
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spectacledraws · 2 years
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ICARUS tried to see too far!!
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theeasterlymedia · 4 years
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A Normative Discussion on Andrei Rublev
Meghnad Mukherjee 
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While watching Rublev, I couldn’t help but think about Béla Tarr and his The Turin Horse. Tarr developed his distinctive style over time, and so one should presume Rublev was a stage in Tarkovsky’s development towards perfecting his almost magical cinematic philosophy that we admire today. In this essay we will be discussing only some of the scenes (and a short general discussion) of this three hours long masterpiece otherwise the obvious following rant would not have stopped.
Holiday, 1408, June
The scene opens with the greatest of all Russian Icon painters Andrei Rublev and his crew of apprentices and helpers on their way to a job in the once-powerful feudal fortress city Vladimir in June of 1408. It is probably the evening of June 23, St. John the Baptist Eve, which falls immediately after summer solstice, the end of spring. The Kliaz'ma River rises north of Moscow, flows between Moscow and the Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery and eastward past Vladimir.
Gathering firewood, Andrei gets caught up in a village pagan ritual. We should notice the sounds of nightingales and of ritual bell percussion.Some would say he seeks a way to join his high spiritual calling and art to the real soil of Russian folk experience, his "civilization" to his "culture". One way to describe the linkage of Christian "civilization" with Russian pagan "culture" is dual faith. Andrei is about to have a "dual faith" experience himself, and so are you if you let the film have its way.The making of a straw effigy and the burning of it are documented features of peasant ritual on St. John's Eve. The sexual license portrayed here is characteristic of peasant spring and summer rituals. Andrei stands over a smoldering camp fire and his monkish robes catch fire. Fire and water are central to the pagan rituals of St. John's Eve (they are also central to Tarkovsky's own personal film imagery). The men and women are performing a characteristic ritual of St. John's Eve. Also don't miss the scene downstream from the two lines of naked folk---a white horse comes into view and begins to thrash the river's surface as the ritual boat approaches.
Andrei is captured and bound in a stable by villagers who do not want him to interfere with their dear ritual. Marfa approaches him and plants an earthly kiss: physical contact of native paganism with highly refined and civilized Christianity. Notice the necklace she wears. Also notice how Andrei sheds his monkish cowl (identifying "uniform" of the black or monkish clergy) as he decides to melt into the woods and rejoin the village fest. As the next morning follows someone has squealed on the village revelers. The local landlord and his ruffian men-at-arms on horseback appear, accompanied by clerical enforcers, all bent on doing their official Christian duty. They hope to run down participants in last night's ritual. Sure enough, here comes Marfa and her significant other, chased by authorities. He doesn't get away, but she swims toward the middle of the river, immediately past the boat carrying Andrei, but he will not look at her. She splashes bravely out to deep waters.
Raid, autumn, 1408
Now we jump ahead a few weeks to the fall of 1408 and the outskirts of the city Vladimir. This army is led by a Russian prince who is a rival of his own brother for power in Vladimir. A tatar Khan’s army and his one will join up at a difficult river ford in preparation for an attack on Vladimir. As the two armies link up, the Khan and the Russian prince vie with one another to see who is faster. The Russian prince recalls an event in the previous winter in which the church tried to reconcile him with his rival brother. The wintry church is the great in Vladimir, built in 1194-1197. You can just barely make out the remarkable animal, vegetable and human figures carved in relief in the white stone outer walls of this ancient cathedral. These figures are taken to be themselves representatives of the combination of old pre-Christian "Scythian" motifs with Biblical themes.
Two times later in this section of the film, the Russian prince flashes back to this treacherous "kissing of the cross" which he and his Tatar ally are now about to betray. The second flashback occurs as the Russian prince witnesses the Tatar humiliation of the captured prince's brother and family and receives from the Tatars the vestments of the now deposed brother's power. The sounds of the Orthodox mass can be heard again, now in the courtyard as the Tatar khan nervously walks his war horse back and forth in anticipation of breaking into the church. A dying horse comes down a stairway and falls to the ground, bleeding to death. This is a disturbing and powerful scene. We may be more touched by this cruel death than by all the other film portrayals of human death. As the horse stumbles to its death, from the church we hear the most characteristic phrases from the Russian mass: Hospodi, pomilui, Hospodi, pomilui... [Lord, have mercy, Lord, have mercy...].
Soon, we see inside the cathedral being rammed by the Tatar army.We spy Andrei again. He is with a young blond woman. The actress is Tarkovsky's wife, and she is playing a paradigmatic Russian cultural role: the holy fool. She is a "durochka", not able to take care of herself, but in her naive simplicity representing something very dear to Russian tradition. Andrei has made himself her protector in earlier scenes, and now they are trapped together as the cathedral door breaks open. What a scene, as the Tatar khan paces his horse around inside the cathedral, asking the Russian prince taunting questions about the holy images on the walls, most now burning. The brave and defiant Foma is tortured, molten lead is poured into his mouth, and he is dragged to his death by a stallion stampeded through the devastated streets of Vladimir.The traitorous prince is beset with deep misgivings about this destructive adventure. Large white geese float from cathedral rooftops to the disordered streets below, all in slow motion. Andrei and Durochka are still in the church and try to come to terms with what has just transpired.
Tatar's Wife
The final scene I have selected is four years later, the winter of 1412. It is a hard winter, and famine stalks the land. Andrei is heating large stones and trying to transfer them to wooden casks to heat water. Durochka is eating an old apple. The Tatar khan rides into the monastery with several of his warriors. They are in a playful mood. The khan feeds frozen meat to quarrelsome dogs. Durochka wants some too. What follows is one of the most intriguing "falling-in-love" scenes in all of filmdom. Andrei tries to intervene, but this situation is beyond his or just about any imaginable power to change. As the khan sweeps Durochka up behind his saddle and he and his warriors gallop out of the monastery courtyard through a roofed gateway, our time is up.
Some commentary or rather a casual discussion --
Tarkovsky created a film about faith in a time when there were no films about religion, apart from satire or anti-religion propaganda. At the same time, people who were religious have tended to view film as a profane medium, inappropriate for religious topics. Andrei Rublev was a 15th-century monk regarded as Russia’s greatest icon writer. While his work is well known and celebrated throughout Russia, little is known of his life except for the handful of icons he left behind. Tarkovsky invented life for Rublev. It is then not an investigation into the painter’s life, but Tarkovsky’s response to what the filmmaker saw and felt by looking at Rublev’s icons.
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Moving through ‘a sequence of detailed fragments’ in which Rublev is sometimes present, sometimes only an observer, the film works toward difficult questions: how is experience related, and how can it be communicated? How can art be true to its subject and its audience?How do you paint the trinity without just reducing it to the sum of its parts?
At once humble and cosmic, Rublev was described by Tarkovsky as a “film of the earth.” Shot in widescreen and sharply defined black and white, the movie is supremely tactile—the four classical elements appearing here as mist, mud, guttering candles, and snow. A 360-degree pan around a primitive stable conveys the wonder of existence. Such long, sinuous takes are like expressionist brushstrokes; the result is a kind of narrative impasto.The film’s brilliant, never-explained prologue shows some medieval Icarus braving an angry crowd to storm the heavens. Having climbed a church tower, he takes flight in a primitive hot-air balloon—an exhilarating panorama—before crashing to earth. Fifteenth century Russia was a tumultuous country, never really at peace, and Tarkovsky shows this in particular in the latter half of the film. The theme of conscience is present throughout the film.Tarkovsky plays here with sound and silence, almost deafening silence.
Shooting the entire movie in black and white, Tarkovsky finally dazzles the audience with close-ups of Rublev’s works, revealed for the first time during the movie in all their brilliance and colour. After more than two hours of sombre and austere imagery, the beauty of the frescoes amazes the viewers. The art, born from the endeavours and aspirations of the artist, is presented to the audience in all its grandeur, rising over the everyday like the man on the balloon at the beginning of the movie. This universal quality of the artist and his work makes the historical period irrelevant, performing a spiritual sweep, casting an ethereal spell on the audience.
Andrei Rublev is itself more an icon than a movie about an icon painter. (Perhaps it should be seen as a “moving icon”) This is a portrait of an artist in which no one lifts a brush. The patterns are God’s, whether seen in a close-up of spilled paint swirling into pond water or the clods of dirt Rublev flings against a whitewashed wall. But no movie has ever attached greater significance to the artist’s role. It is as though Rublev’s presence justifies creation.
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maiathebee · 7 years
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Comprehensive Bibliography Of BTS
This is just a list of material referenced, alluded to or related to BTS’s concepts, music, photobooks, albums and music videos.  This is not a fan theory, or an attempt at one! Anyways here’s the precursor to my scholarly paper, lolllll (I’m not joking though).  I’ll update it as we goooooo....
Also, I know almost nothing about the School trilogy, but it’s my understanding that there’s not a lot of outside source material.  I could be wrong though.  Does it reference mangas and stuff??? send me a msg if you know.
(just a reminder that while BTS is remarkably involved in the creative direction of the group, the formation of a kpop groups’ era/concept is made by a large team of people, and therefore the members probably haven’t even considered or explored upwards of half the material on this list).
(asterisks mean that these works are not directly referenced by BTS in their interviews, lyrics or imagery, etc, but which are still tangentially related)
BTS book club list is as follows:
Shim Cheong - a Korean Panseori tale (Dark and Wild)
Demian by Hermann Hesse (Wings)
Seven Sermons to the Dead by Carl Jung (Wings)*
The Collected Works of CG Jung by Carl Jung (Wings)*
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by F. Nietzsche (Wings)
Beyond Good and Evil by F. Nietzsche (Wings)*
The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K Le Guin  (YNWA) 
The Moral Philosopher and The Moral Life by William James  (YNWA)*
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (YNWA)*
Le Transperceneige by Jacques Lob (YNWA)
Then here’s the film club list:
She and Her Cat (dir. Makoto Shinkai)(short film) (HYYH pt.2)(this is according to Bang PD)
Lost River (dir. Ryan Goslin) (Young Forever)
Big Fish (dir. Tim Burton) (reason here)  (YNWA)
The Helpers/No Vacancy (dir. Chris Stokes) (YNWA)* (tbh this seems fairly coincidental to me, which is why it gets an asterisk.
Snowpiercer (dir. Bong Joon Ho) (YNWA)
BTS music playlist:
Wild For The Night by A$AP rocky (Dark & Wild)
Friday Night Lights by J.Cole (Dark & Wild)
2001 by Dr. Dre (Dark & Wild)
花樣的年華 - Zhou Xuan (HYYH pt.1/pt.2)*
Nevermind - Nirvana (HYYH pt.2)
Wasted Youth (HYYH pt.2)
Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd (Young Forever)
Passacaglia in D minor (BuxWV 161) - Buxtehude (Wings)
You’ll Never Walk Alone - Louis Armstrong (YNWA)* (100% this isn’t a purposeful reference, but it’s a good song, y’all should listen to it)
BTS’s art history class bibliography:
Julius Caesar on Gold by Basquiat (Young Forever)
Tricycle by Basquiat and Warhol (Young Forever)*
Orange Sports Figure by Basquiat (Young Forever)
The Fall of the Rebel Angels - Bruegel the Elder (Wings)
The Landscape with the Fall of Icarus - Bruegel the Elder (Wings)
The Lament for Icarus - Draper (Wings)
La Pieta by Michelangelo (Wings)
Personnes by Christian Boltanski (YNWA)*
Further Analysis (and more fan-theory type stuff) in chronological order,  under this read more~~
I’m not sure there’s meant to be a single “correct” reading of the group’s narrative or story. Even in Wings, which drew its story fully from Demian, the ultimate narrative of the BST M/V is more vague.  While there might be a complete and overarching narrative that Bighit is trying to create with Bangtan’s concepts/mvs, I think it’s more likely that there are a lot of narrative threads running through the story, and some are maintained longterm, some are relevant only to as specific chapter, while others are merely aesthetic/cosmetic.  I have a feeling that even longterm narrative ideas are sometimes allowed to fade away for the benefit of moving the story forward at the pace they want. 
Dark and Wild
Shim Cheong is just a throwaway simile on hip hop lover.  I’m pretty sure it’s a reference to the idea that seeing Shim Cheong again allowed her blind father to gain the ability to see.
References like the one to Wild for the Night on hiphop lover (they also tweeted about the song back in 2013) don’t really do much except show that they genuinely like/listen to American rap and also it explains at least 66% of the dumb mistakes Rap Monster has made, probably, my poor problematic child.  Hip Hop lover references a ton of artists, but I just included the ones that are mentioned by more than just name.
The Most Beautiful Moment In Life (pt.1/pt.2)
Zhou Xuan is the first media reference point for HYYH (花樣年華)(It’s what the Chinese title for In the Mood For Love is based on). The lyrics refer to forgotten dreams.
Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood For Love (花樣年華) is not listed, as RM mentioned in the interview that this was not associated with their album. 
Notes of a Desolate Man by Tianwen Shu is excerpted in a Taiwanese literary anthology by the name of  花樣年華, and I though think it relates thematically, it’s merely my own personal association~ There’s no indication that BTS or Bighit even knows it exists.  Tianwen Shu is greatly influenced by Lu Xun, who wrote the anti-confucian societal norms novel, A Madman’s Diary. 
Nirvana t-shirts are a go to for BTS’s stylists, probably MOSTLY because they fit their preferred grunge image, but the word “Nirvana” fits well into the ideas of tragedy/death, utopia/dystopia and idealism that BTS plays with, while Nirvana the band is obviously a good reference point for realistic portrayals of youth culture and music which speaks to young people, particularly the crazy popular Nevermind (ahem Yoongi’s intro song) with Smells Like Teen Spirit and Come As You Are.  (further fan theory here)
It’s crazy to me that Bang PD found inspiration in a five minute anime about a cat, but read the wiki summary and you’ll believe him:  “When it's over She cries and becomes depressed. Chobi does not understand what the conversation was about or what happened but concludes that it was not her fault. He stands by her and comforts her. Time goes on and it becomes winter. She continues going to work and moves on with her life. In the end Chobi and She are happy with their life together and say in unison, 'This world, I think we like it.’”
Fire (Young Forever)
Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” thematically deals with youth/nostalgia (Shine On You Crazy Diamond: "Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun").  It includes critiques of the music industry and the cliches that the group had to deal with.  The narrative of Wish You Were Here is very much in line with Bangtan’s overall group narrative.
Lost River (a phrase you can see on a wall in the Fire M/V) is a film about a poor community, and specifically a mother and her two sons, going through crisis.  The film includes a scene of a party in an abandoned high school and ends with both a house and a car on fire. The film has an open ending which leaves room for an improved future, but the film is primarily about the limited possibilities and opportunities
As far as I can tell, the “Basquiat” paintings in the fire M/V are just imitations rather than references to specific paintings.  They’re probably being used just as an aesthetic choice - Basquiat’s art was a synthesis of street art, outsider art, social commentary and post-expressionism.  However, his life is also relevant narratively: he died young at 27 and he first gained fame as a graffiti artist.
I’m not putting it above because the film is super inappropriate, but the phrase “enter the void” is used in the Run M/V, and could refer to the Gaspar Noe film of the same name.  The title of that film is, in fact, a reference to The Tibetan Book of the Dead.  However, the term “void” (and the images of the void in the M/V) could just be a reference to five elements in Japanese Buddhism (including fire), particularly the Book of Five Rings.  But this is me getting uber fan theory, lol.
Another graffitied phrase in the Run M/V is “wasted youth.”  This could be one of three things; a reference to the hardcore punk band, Wasted Youth, an allusion to Fast Times at Ridgemont High which also includes a scene featuring “wasted youth” graffitied on a wall, or the phrase isn’t an allusion, but merely a description of the M/V concept.
Wings
The relationship to Demian needs its own post, so I won’t even go into it itself, but the tangential references it spawned are as follows:
The paintings in the Wings video are all in reference to Demian but are also all biblical/mythological in nature, based on the book of revelations, Ovid’s The Art of Love,  and the crucifixion.  The religious references, however, are dulled down -- Jesus is not fully sculpted, leaving him to be a vaguely carved form and allowing the image to stand more as an allegory for the relationship between mother and “son” in Demian.  (some further fan analysis of the art here)(and more specifically on the use of icarus).
The Passacaglia is also a piece which is referred to in Demian in the part of the book where the narrator begins to find spiritual fulfillment through music and art, something BTS talks about a lot.
Demian draws lot from Carl Jung, particularly his ideas about symbolism, archetypes and psychoanalysis.  The book specifically alludes to Jung’s Seven Sermons, and the idea that Abraxas is the ultimate being, uniting both god and the devil.  Thematically, through Demian, this deals with themes of forming ones’ own moral code, and ideas of will and strength of character, with good and evil being both at odds but also simultaneously part of everything. This theory/concept in largely influenced by Nietzsche, most especially his Beyond Good and Evil.  Together these are all philosophies which pull away from the ideas of societal norms or strict social structures and place a premium on personal/creative expression.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (quoted in the Wings photobook and BST M/V) also furthers this idea that good and evil are “a wheel.”  It posits that Truth (not morality) is the highest virtue and that idealists flee from reality (SEE: Icarus).  The novel also introduces the idea of the overman, which is a gross idea and super problematic, but I can it being applied thematically to BTS as the idea of a ‘fully realized self.’  Zarathustra is a figure Nietzsche borrowed from Zoroastrianism.  (this writer has more ideas on some connections to Nietzsche).
You Never Walk Alone
“Omelas” and the theme of walking obviously references the Le Guin story, which is inspired by the William James essay, which in turn borrows ideas from Dostoyevsky.
Namjoon’s reference Snowpiercer plays into the video’s visual narrative (an inescapable cycle, the train, the cyclical nature of seasons, laundry is a cycle [2mjjk theory speaks to all these, lol]) as the story is about a train which circles the globe, in a world stuck in perpetual winter. Unlike the more environmentally-focused graphic novel, Snowpiercer the (korean-directed) film is intensely focused on class inequality, a theme which runs through BTS’s albums (see particularly Baepsae, but it’s a concern relevant to their School series, since most pressures put on students are related to social class) and which is of incredible concern to Korean people, and therefore is a common concern of a lot of Korean art.  Bong Joon Ho’s other film works are all very heavy on social commentary  (the host deals with the american military and politics/activism, sea fog also talks about social inequality... etc...), so referencing one of his films is a pretty clear statement that you are making a critical commentary on something.  Like the Le Guin short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, the film is about a dystopia in which the upper class/middle class/general public is reliant on the continual suffering of another (in this class the lower class or last train) to survive.  Trains provide a very easy metaphor for class given their class divisions into separate carriages.  This was also applied in another Korean blockbuster from the last year, Train to Busan (dir Yeon Sang-ho), which included some pretty transparent commentary on the negative effect that an apathetic, self-serving, lazy (male) middle-aged, middle-class could have on the survival of families and younger generations.
Most fan theories agree that the clothes in the M/V are a reference to the sewol ferry disaster.  Here is the fan explanation for how that connects to Boltanski’s Personnes.
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