Category: FILM IN PHASE SPACE

Prime Directive

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James Bond: Prime Directive (An Amazon Studios Original Film—Available Exclusively on Prime Video with Free One-Day Shipping!)

There was a time—perhaps mythical, perhaps real—when James Bond was a man of simple appetites: martinis, women, and the occasional war crime disguised as “Queen and Country.” He was a blunt instrument of empire, a wrecking ball in a tuxedo, and that was fine. That was the job. But those days are gone, rotted from the inside out, liquified in the great capitalist centrifuge.

Yes, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, keepers of the Bond franchise—steadfast, unwavering—have finally cashed out. Not just in the usual Hollywood sense, where dignity is a line item in the budget, but in a way that would make even Ian Fleming choke on his filtered Morland cigarette. The Broccoli-Wilson dynasty didn’t just sell Bond to Amazon. No, no. They absorbed Spectre into Amazon and handed 007 the login credentials. James Bond now works for Spectre, which now is Amazon, which is now… what? A privatized intelligence agency? A planetary-scale data hoover? A corporation with its own standing army? Hell, maybe all three. The lines have blurred so much they may as well be static.

Of course, it all makes perfect sense. If there was ever a modern incarnation of Spectre, it would be Amazon—tentacles in everything, invisible yet omnipresent, its ultimate loyalty not to any ideology but to control itself. And Bond, the eternal patriot, ever the good soldier, does what he always does: adapts to the mission. So now, instead of serving Her Majesty’s Secret Service, he answers to the unholy trinity of market analytics, surveillance capitalism, and one-click assassination authorizations.

MI6 is no more. The British government, citing cost-cutting measures and an unprecedented trade deal with a shadowy corporate entity, has privatized its entire intelligence apparatus. Enter Amazon-Spectre Global Security Solutions™ (ASGSS™), a thrilling new subsidiary handling espionage, assassinations, and same-hour drone strikes with the efficiency of an optimized supply chain. Bond villains used to be deranged industrialists hell-bent on global domination. Now? They just made payroll.

In the teaser sequence James Bond, now codename Agent Prime-007, reports directly to Jeff “Blofeld” Bezos, who strokes a genetically engineered, algorithmically perfected cat while sipping a $14 artisanal oat milk espresso from his own monopoly-controlled supply chain. Bond’s mission? To hunt down a rogue faction of MI6 purists—led by a disgruntled, furloughed M—who refuse to accept that the future of national security is a subscription-based service.

MI6’s absorption wasn’t a hostile takeover—it was a mercy killing. Spectre-Amazon didn’t need British intelligence; it already controlled more data than any government agency could dream of. But there was something quaint about MI6, a relic of the Westphalian system, a charming little espionage boutique with all its Cold War nostalgia and stiff-upper-lip theatrics. So, in an act of sheer sentimentality, Amazon-Spectre simply acquired it, much like one acquires an artisanal coffee brand or a failing newspaper. The Brits, ever the romantics, were allowed to keep their little rituals—tea at headquarters, the whole “Your Majesty’s Service” schtick—but make no mistake: every operation, every assassination, every bit of intelligence now runs through Spectre-Amazon’s cloud infrastructure. It’s service to the Crown, sure—but only as long as the Prime Membership is active.

As Bond navigates this brave new world, he finds himself questioning everything: Does he still have a license to kill, or is it now a revocable in-app purchase? Are his Aston Martin’s machine guns now merely an auto-renewable feature, locked behind a Prime Ultra Premium Subscription? And most importantly—who is really in charge when Spectre, Amazon, and the British government are all just different names on the same offshore tax document?

Of course, James Bond has always been a well-groomed billboard. For decades, he’s been shilling luxury watches, overpriced cologne, and cars most of his audience will only ever see in video games. But with Amazon-Spectre at the helm, this has been taken to its final, logical conclusion: Bond himself is now a storefront.

Every frame of Prime Directive is an interactive shopping experience. When Bond walks into a casino, a discreet ka-ching sounds, and a sleek Prime overlay pops up: “Shop the Look: Bond’s Midnight Tuxedo Collection™—FREE Same-Day Delivery with Prime.” The film’s action scenes now feature strategically timed slow-motion sequences, allowing audiences to scan on-screen QR codes for exclusive access to Bond’s tactical gear. “Want to smell like a government-sanctioned murderer? Try 007 Noir: An Amazon Exclusive.” Even Bond’s classic Walther PPK now comes in a special “Alexa-Enabled” edition, complete with voice activation—“Alexa, shoot the bad guy.”

Gadgets? Forget Q Branch. Those bespoke MI6 innovations have been replaced by Amazon Basics™ tech—cost-effective, mass-produced, and delivered in frustration-free packaging. Instead of an ejector seat, Bond’s Aston Martin now comes with Amazon AutoPilot™, powered by AWS—it doesn’t eject you when things get dicey, but it does offer exclusive in-car shopping deals when you’re in the vicinity of an Amazon Fresh. The new MI6-issued smartwatch? An Amazon Halo, tracking Bond’s stress levels, sleep patterns, and how efficiently he eliminates corporate threats.

The product placement isn’t subtle—it’s an onslaught. Bond can’t have a drink without an on-screen notification prompting “Buy the Official Vesper Martini Cocktail Kit—Available Now on Amazon Fresh” or step into a high-stakes poker game without “Shop Amazon Casino Royale: Luxury Chips & Felt Tables for Your Home.” Every fight scene features a “Click to Buy” overlay on Bond’s boots, his tie, his bloodstained shirt. Even the henchmen are monetized—each one sporting an Amazon Workwear Essentials™ tactical vest, available at a discount for Prime members.

But the real coup de grâce? Amazon’s proprietary Predictive Commerce Engine—an AI-driven feature that automatically adds Bond’s latest gear to your cart before you even realize you want it. By the time the credits roll, you’ll have a package at your door containing the very same sunglasses Bond wore while dodging drone strikes in a Dubai skyline chase.

And why wouldn’t Bond sell out completely? The man’s been whoring himself out to brands for decades. The difference now is that you don’t just watch Bond. You buy Bond.

With thrilling sequences shot entirely inside an Amazon fulfillment center—where Bond fights off disgruntled warehouse workers radicalized by too much safety training.

TEMU

Bond’s mission is clear: eliminate TEMU before it’s too late. Deep inside Jeff Bezos’ secret orbital fortress, AMAZON ONE, the High Council of Spectre-Amazon convenes for an emergency strategy meeting. It’s a sleek, sterile chamber of glass and steel, floating above Earth like the watchful eye of a retail god. Holographic charts flicker across the room, showing plummeting profit margins. The enemy is spreading. The West is losing the shopping war.

For decades, Spectre-Amazon has controlled the flow of goods, services, and intelligence with the precision of a trillion-dollar supply chain. Every consumer tracked, every purchase logged, every fleeting impulse turned into a same-day delivery. The system was perfect. But now, an outside force is disrupting the equilibrium—something sinister, something… cheap.

Like a parasitic organism creeping through cracks in the firewall, TEMU has been infiltrating the European and American markets with ruthless efficiency. It’s flooding the system with impossibly low prices, baffling shipping times, and mysterious, unlabeled packages that seem to materialize out of nowhere. “How are they doing it?” the analysts at Spectre-Amazon whisper in their data centers. “Who is funding them?”

The truth is too horrifying to say out loud: TEMU doesn’t play by the rules. It doesn’t need brand partnerships, doesn’t need infrastructure, doesn’t need permission. It operates from the shadows, an empire of disposable goods churned out by algorithmic black magic. No licensing deals, no regulations, just an unrelenting tsunami of $3 smartwatches and $5 tactical boots, undercutting every market, destabilizing economies, turning loyal Prime Members into treacherous bargain hunters.

Spectre-Amazon’s predictive models are crumbling. Warehouse workers are defecting. Prime Members—once the most loyal consumers in human history—are clicking on other apps, wandering into the depths of discount anarchy. The system is breaking down.

And so, Bond is deployed—not to kill, necessarily, but to restore order. His mission takes him deep into the heart of the chaos: grimy ports overflowing with boxes labeled in unreadable fonts, dark factories humming with a workforce that seems eerily… automated. No paper trails, no board of directors, just an unknowable entity funneling goods into the global bloodstream at speeds even Spectre-Amazon can’t match.

His orders? Destroy TEMU’s supply chain at the source. The plan is brutal, direct, and Prime-eligible for immediate execution: Bezos’ space station—outfitted with AWS Orbital Strike Capabilities™—will unleash a “targeted fulfillment disruption” on TEMU’s offshore megafactories. The operation is codenamed FREE SHIPPING, and it will be Spectre-Amazon’s largest tactical intervention since the hostile takeover of MI6. Bond suits up. His mission: infiltrate the TEMU Quantum Relay, a secret communications satellite coordinating their entire global logistics empire. If he can hack the system, Spectre-Amazon can deploy its ultimate weapon—a proprietary Cloud-Based Hyperinflation Virus that will render TEMU’s entire pricing model obsolete, forcing all their $2 sneakers to cost at least $300 overnight.

Temu isn’t a company. It’s something older, something bigger—an evolving economic virus, a self-replicating supply chain that answers to no one. Not even Beijing. It doesn’t sell things—it creates need, spinning synthetic desire out of thin air.

And for the first time in his long career, Bond faces an existential crisis. How do you kill something that doesn’t exist?

And now, it’s winning.

There’s only one solution. Total economic warfare.

THE FINAL SHOWDOWN

But TEMU won’t go down without a fight. As Bond launches toward the TEMU satellite in a Bezos-funded Blue Origin tactical shuttle, a swarm of unbranded Chinese drones intercepts him, piloted remotely from a sweatshop-turned-cyberwarfare lab in an undisclosed industrial park. The battle is on.

Zero gravity combat. Bond, floating through the void, using a laser-equipped Kindle as a makeshift weapon. TEMU’s android enforcers—cheaper, faster, entirely disposable—closing in from all sides. He kicks off a floating pallet of Amazon Basics™ stainless steel water bottles, sending them spiraling into an enemy drone, exploding on impact.

Finally, Bond reaches the TEMU Quantum Relay, a monolithic, unmarked structure orbiting 200 miles above Earth. Inside, the final boss awaits: a nameless AI CEO, a digital consciousness that is TEMU, its voice a distorted chorus of customer reviews and vague product descriptions.

TEMU AI: “Welcome, James Bond. Would you like to see similar items based on your preferences?”

Bond grips his Amazon Special Edition Omega Smartwatch™, featuring real-time stock market tracking.

BOND: “Yeah. Show me something… discontinued.”

The final showdown? A high-speed chase through a giant, AI-run shipping hub, where Bond battles TEMU’s faceless operatives—men in logo-less jumpsuits wielding discount machetes. They fight atop conveyor belts, dodging crates of knockoff Ray-Bans and suspiciously cheap Bluetooth earbuds. Bond reaches the control center, only to discover the horrifying truth:

He slams a Prime-branded EMP device onto the core processor. Sparks fly. The algorithm glitches, screaming in a thousand languages at once. A system-wide failure. TEMU’s supply chain begins collapsing in real time—factories grinding to a halt, cargo ships losing direction, warehouses turning into ghost towns of unsold products.

THE SYSTEM CRASHES. THE ECONOMY REBOOTS. AMAZON RESTORES ORDER.

EPILOGUE: THE WORLD BELONGS TO PRIME

With the mission complete, Bond returns to Earth. Western markets stabilize. Spectre-Amazon’s AI-driven commerce model reclaims its rightful dominance. Democracy, as it was meant to be, is restored.

As he sips a Nespresso Martini™ (now available exclusively on Prime), Bond reflects on what he has done. Was it justice? Was it even real? Or was he just another product, another tool in the great fulfillment warehouse of history?

He doesn’t care.

He adjusts his Amazon-Echo-integrated cufflinks, scans his Prime status, and walks off into the neon skyline, ready for the next mission.

The new James Bond Experience™ will be available exclusively on Prime Video, optimized for maximum engagement. There will be algorithmically determined chase sequences, deep-learning-generated sex appeal, and product placement so aggressive it borders on physical assault. Bond’s new gadgets? Limited to the latest Echo devices and a carbon-neutral, subscription-locked Walther PPK that requires a firmware update before firing.

“James Bond will return… pending annual revenue projections.”

Nobody will care. By all measurable metrics, this will work. The world will watch, Prime memberships will spike, and the critics will write their little think pieces about “late-stage capitalism and the death of the hero myth” while queuing up their next delivery of gluten-free snack bars and lithium-ion batteries. So, fine. Let Bond be a company man. Let him clock in, hit his quarterly objectives, and survive on corporate synergy alone. Let him wear the suit, say the lines, and pretend that anything he does still matters.

Diary of a Streamer

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Watching The Hound of the Baskervilles with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Absolutely baffling how they made movies back then with zero fucks given for modern streaming necessities. No bathroom breaks, no snack intermissions, no “Are you still watching?” judgment pop-ups. Just a relentless, uninterrupted story unfolding at a steady pace, as if people were actually expected to just… sit and watch. It’s like they thought people could handle a movie without doing other stuff. Truly barbaric. 😵‍💫

A list of its glaring deficiencies follows:

1. No Repetitive Recaps Every Ten Minutes – Astonishingly, the film expected me to remember what had already happened. At no point did a character turn to the camera and say, “As you may recall…” before summarizing the entire first act. Unforgivable.

2. No On-Screen Text Explaining the Obvious – No pop-up stating “London, 1889” when we were clearly in London, in 1889. No ominous subtitle declaring “The Hound” when the enormous, glowing-eyed dog lunged at the screen. Just trusted the audience to infer things. Barbaric.

3. No Overcompensating Sound Design – When something important was revealed, it was done through mere dialogue and acting. No swelling orchestra, no aggressive bass rumble, no ear-shattering “BWAAAH” to alert me that This Is A Big Moment. Reckless and irresponsible.

4. No Artificially Inserted Cliffhangers – Scenes flowed into one another with distressing smoothness, rather than cutting off mid-sentence to force me into watching the next part. I was left to decide of my own free will whether to keep watching. Disorienting.

5. No Excessive Exposition – At no point did a minor character enter solely to deliver two paragraphs of backstory, exit, and never return. If you wanted to know something, you had to listen or, heaven forbid, piece things together yourself. Who has time for that?

6. No Forced Reactions to Ensure I Knew How to Feel – After a dramatic reveal, the camera did not cut to every single character so I could gauge their emotional state. Some of them simply reacted naturally, and the movie moved on. I found this offensive.

7. No Time-Wasting Fake-Outs – When a shadow loomed ominously, it turned out to be an actual threat, rather than the butler carrying a tray. Every scene contained forward motion. I grew suspicious.

8. No “Dumb Character to Ask Obvious Questions” Trope – No one said, “Wait, so you’re telling me that the mysterious deaths and the giant paw prints could be connected?” The film seemed to think I could follow along without a designated idiot to spell things out. Upsetting.

9. No Algorithmically Inserted Diversity of Tone – The film committed to its atmosphere. No quippy side character deflating the tension. No random slapstick moment to balance out the “heaviness.” Just a persistent, deliberate mood. Reckless disregard for emotional variety.

10. No Sudden Flashbacks to Explain Something Already Understood – At no point did the screen fade to black-and-white and replay an earlier moment just in case I had become distracted by my phone. The film relied entirely on me paying attention the first time. Monstrous.

By the time the credits rolled (without automatically minimizing into the corner of the screen), I was left shaken. The sheer nerve of these filmmakers, crafting something meant to be absorbed in a single, uninterrupted sitting. The sheer audacity of it all.

Had I… just watched a movie? The questions swirled. Had I truly understood the plot without redundant exposition? Had my brain… filled in gaps on its own? Worse still—had I experienced suspense not force-fed by aggressive musical cues, but simply by allowing events to unfold?

I felt changed, and not for the better. My faith in the natural order of things had been shaken to its core.

I glanced at my streaming app, desperate for reassurance. But now, the endless rows of thumbnails, all promising easily digestible. I staggered to my feet, lightheaded, my worldview unraveling. In the distance, my phone buzzed, beckoning me back to the comfort of fragmented attention. I had endured 87 whole minutes of pure, uninterrupted storytelling?

God help me.

Extras

Ah, cryptography! It’s like Andy Millman in Extras, no? At first, it presents itself as this pure, untouchable ideal—a bastion of privacy and individuality in a world determined to collapse all boundaries. It says, “No! I will not compromise!” But what happens? Reality intrudes. And what is reality if not the persistent erosion of the symbolic structure we cling to? Cryptography—like Andy—believes it can exist in a vacuum, but it is always already inscribed into the systems of power it seeks to resist.

First, we must confront the fantasy of cryptography as an unbreakable shield. It relies on assumptions: the hardness of math, the impossibility of brute force, the limits of computing power. But history teaches us that every “perfect” system is ultimately undone. The Enigma machine? Broken. RSA with weak keys? Broken. Andy’s principles? Also broken. The system’s failure is not an anomaly—it is its destiny! Cryptography’s strength exists only as the ideological mask of its inevitable fragility.

Season 1: Episode 3: Kate Winslet Episode (Public Key Encryption)

Here is Andy Millman on the set of a serious film about the Holocaust, only to discover that Kate Winslet—beloved, respectable, pure—is doing it to win an Oscar. This is public key encryption in its ideal form: the clean separation of public and private keys, promising a perfect balance of accessibility and security. But the moment Andy enters this scene, the cracks in the fantasy appear. Kate’s public persona (“I care about meaningful art”) is hollowed out by the private truth (“I’m doing this for the awards”), just as public key encryption rests on fragile assumptions—prime factorization, computational hardness—that become increasingly vulnerable over time. Andy, like cryptography, begins to realize that the symbolic purity he depends on is always already a performance.

And then, ah! Darren Lamb—the human element. Cryptography assumes the weakness is outside the system, in the adversary trying to break in. But the true weakness is always internal! Humans with “password123,” social engineering, phishing emails—Darren is the embodiment of the internal failure that cryptography cannot account for. The very people it relies on sabotage it from within, much like Andy’s sitcom is ruined by his own compromises.

Season 1 Episode 4: The Les Dennis Episode (Bitcoin Forks)

Ah, poor Les Dennis—reduced from household name to desperate panto performer. He is Bitcoin after the first big hard fork: still recognizable, but irreparably fractured, clinging to relevance in a world that has moved on. Andy, desperate to make a name for himself, tries to elevate Les’s sinking career, much like the crypto community rallies around Bitcoin forks like Bitcoin Cash or Bitcoin SV, claiming they will solve scaling issues or restore “Satoshi’s vision.” But the truth is obvious: just as Les’s glory days are behind him, so too is the simplicity of Bitcoin’s original promise. What remains is a fragmented system fighting for legitimacy in a world of diminishing trust.

Season 1 Episode 6: The Patrick Stewart Episode (Mass Surveillance and the Myth of Perfect Privacy)

Now, let us speak of governments and corporations. Patrick Stewart’s infamous, “And then I see everything” line is not just a joke; it is a profound metaphor for how power operates.

Patrick Stewart’s absurd obsession with omniscience—turning invisible and spying on women—is a perfect metaphor for mass surveillance programs like PRISM. These systems promise omnipotence, claiming they can “see everything” even through encrypted channels. And yet, like Stewart’s ridiculous fantasies, their power is always undermined by their absurdities. Cryptography, in this context, plays Andy: caught between the desire to maintain its artistic integrity (privacy) and the demands of the industry (governments mandating backdoors). The result is a farce: encryption schemes that work only until the Patrick Stewarts of the world decide they don’t.

These entities want cryptography—yes—but only if it includes backdoors, exceptions, and surveillance mechanisms. They demand a system that is strong, but only insofar as it reinforces their ability to control. Cryptography, then, is caught in this dialectic: a tool of resistance that is co-opted by the very forces it resists.

Series 2, Episode 1: The Orlando Bloom Episode (NFT Hype and Scams)

Orlando Bloom, obsessed with proving he is not jealous of Johnny Depp, is the perfect stand-in for NFTs. Here is a system (Bloom/NFTs) built entirely on insecurity, desperately trying to prove its uniqueness while the public (like Maggie) doesn’t care. Andy’s bewilderment at Bloom’s posturing mirrors the cryptography community’s reaction to the NFT hype. “But what is the point?” Andy asks, just as critics ask of NFTs: “Why build a digital asset reliant on cryptographic signatures if the value is entirely performative?” The whole episode is a commentary on the hollow, performative uniqueness of systems that collapse under their own absurdity.

And AI—ah, this is where it gets truly terrifying! AI doesn’t break cryptography in the traditional sense. It bypasses it entirely. Metadata, patterns, behavioral inference—these are the tools of an intelligence that does not respect the boundaries cryptography was designed to protect. It doesn’t crack the dam; it seeps through every tiny crevice, eroding the walls from within.

Ah, the David Bowie episode! (Series 2, Episode 2). This is Andy Millman’s lowest point, where he is publicly humiliated by Bowie, who improvises a mocking song about Andy: “Chubby little loser.” And yet, this episode is also about how AI relates to creativity and its ability to expose the uncomfortable truths we try to hide.

David Bowie in this episode is AI at its most disruptive and incisive. He is the generative model that observes Andy for mere minutes, synthesizes his insecurities and failures, and turns them into a cutting, viral hit. Bowie’s improvised song functions much like AI’s ability to process vast amounts of data—behavioral patterns, preferences, insecurities—and distill them into something that feels unnervingly personal. It’s a reminder that AI, like Bowie, doesn’t just collapse boundaries between public and private; it also mirrors back our worst traits, stripped of the illusions we use to protect ourselves.

Andy’s reaction—humiliation and retreat—is the perfect metaphor for how institutions and individuals respond to AI-generated insights. Much like Andy, we are not ready to face the sheer power of these models to deconstruct our curated identities and replace them with brutal, data-driven caricatures. AI, like Bowie in this scene, holds up a mirror, and it is not a flattering one. It doesn’t care about Andy’s efforts to appear serious or respectable; it reduces him to the essence of his contradictions: a chubby little loser who dreams of fame but cannot handle its cost.

And yet, there’s a darker layer here: Bowie’s performance is not just an act of truth-telling. It’s also an exercise in dominance. By reducing Andy to a figure of ridicule, Bowie consolidates his own artistic mystique. Similarly, AI systems consolidate power by exposing human vulnerabilities, often while their creators benefit—whether through profit or influence. Just as Bowie walks away unscathed, AI developers are rarely held accountable for the societal impacts of their creations. It’s Andy, not Bowie, who pays the price.

This episode captures the dual nature of AI: its ability to deconstruct and reveal, but also its complicity in perpetuating systems of power that thrive on our insecurities. AI doesn’t just create; it redefines the terms of creation, leaving us, like Andy, scrambling to understand our place in a world that has already moved on.

The great irony, then, is that cryptography believes it is preserving individuality, but it is already complicit in the systems that erase it. Andy Millman thought he could resist the collapse into celebrity shallowness, but the moment he entered the game, he was doomed. His BAFTA speech, like cryptography’s desperate claims of stability, comes too late. The collapse has already happened.

Series 2, Episode 6: The BAFTA Episode (The Collapse of Cryptographic Trust)

Finally, we reach the BAFTA episode, where Andy delivers his scathing speech denouncing the system that has destroyed his integrity. This is the collapse of cryptographic trust—when encryption fails to protect privacy, and the public realizes the system itself is compromised. Think of major breaches like the Snowden revelations or the meltdown of cryptographic protocols like MD5 or SHA-1. Andy’s disillusionment is the moment when the fantasy breaks, and he realizes that no amount of encryption—or artistic integrity—can withstand the relentless pressures of a system designed to exploit rather than preserve. His speech is cathartic, yes, but it comes too late. The damage is done. The collapse is irreversible.

So, we must ask: what is cryptography? It is not a stabilizing force; it is a fantasy of stability in a world where collapse is the only constant. It is the symptom of a system that cannot sustain itself, a last-ditch attempt to hold together the boundaries that power—and AI—are determined to dissolve. Cryptography does not delay the collapse; it is the collapse, caught in its own impossibility.

The lesson of Extras is the same as the lesson of cryptography: the system that promises stability and integrity is always undermined by its own contradictions. Andy’s integrity crumbles under fame’s pressures, just as cryptography’s guarantees crumble under the weight of quantum computing, AI inference, and human error. To believe otherwise is to indulge in the same hubris as Andy Millman—thinking you can maintain boundaries in a world determined to collapse them.

Ben-Hur

The brilliance of Ben-Hur, and its simultaneous duplicity, lies in its quiet realignment of cultural identity for the sake of narrative expedience. Judah Ben-Hur, ostensibly a Middle Eastern Jew in the Roman province of Judea, is unmistakably reframed as an Ashkenazi Jew—a Jewishness that is Western, assimilable, and, crucially, palatable to mid-century American audiences. Charlton Heston’s towering Nordic features and clipped diction render Judah less a Judean patriot and more a prototypical American man of destiny, stranded inconveniently in an antique world. This is not an accident; it is a choice—a calculated sleight of hand.

The adoption of the name Arius is no small symbolic act. By being subsumed into the Roman patrician elite, Judah casts off his provincial origins like a beggar discarding his rags. To Rome, he ceases to be an outsider—a Jew—and becomes instead a version of himself that the empire can tolerate: a cosmopolitan inheritor of power. He is a Jew only in so far as it facilitates the story’s moral arc, his identity purified of the inconvenient specifics of Judean culture. This transformation reflects not just Hollywood’s discomfort with depicting the true otherness of ancient Jewishness, but its preference for Westernizing its heroes to make their triumphs universal.

This is the dog whistle of identity in Ben-Hur. Judah’s ascension within Rome is not just a personal victory but a conversion—a metaphysical endorsement of Rome’s civilizing mission. The implicit message: true Jewishness is only acceptable when it ceases to be distinct, when it is grafted onto the trunk of Western culture. Judah’s final absolution, kneeling at the cross, is less about the salvation of a man than the quiet erasure of his heritage. He is no longer a Jew, nor even a Roman; he becomes something more familiar to the 1959 audience: a Christian.

Gore Vidal was brought in to revise the Ben-Hur screenplay, and his sharp wit and skill with innuendo elevated the material far beyond the typical Roman spectacle. Vidal made implicit themes explicit, particularly in the dynamic between Judah Ben-Hur and Messala. He deliberately framed their relationship as one with a deeply intimate past, transforming Messala’s betrayal into a personal and emotional rupture rather than a purely political one. This subtext added a layer of sophistication and complexity, turning Ben-Hur into a reflection on identity, power, and forbidden desire, rather than just another grandiose biblical epic.

At the same time, Vidal infused the film with his own critique of hypocrisy. The Rome of Ben-Hur, sanitized for mid-century consumption, is a far cry from the violent, chaotic empire Vidal explored in his own writings. Yet it unmistakably mirrors Eisenhower’s America: imperial yet righteous, brutal yet self-proclaimed benevolent. Judah’s journey embodies the ideological transformation Hollywood often demanded of its Jewish characters—placing them at the center of grand narratives of empire while simultaneously stripping their identity of its troubling particularities.

The gradation of Jewishness in Hollywood epics becomes a dance of acceptable assimilation. Middle Eastern Jews—unruly, provincial, overtly tied to the land—are rarely represented except as foils or obstacles. Ashkenazi Jews, with their European lineage, occupy the middle ground: able to transcend their origins, provided they shed their specificities. And at the pinnacle is the Christianized Jew, who triumphs by stepping fully into the universalizing embrace of Western civilization. Judah Ben-Hur’s story, then, is not just one of revenge and redemption, but of quiet cultural conquest.

Hollywood, we might note with a sardonic smirk, has always preferred its Jews Europeanized and its saviors Romanized. In this way, the cinema becomes less a temple of storytelling and more a house of mirrors, endlessly reflecting the anxieties of its creators.

HOUSE OF MIRRORS

In Ben-Hur, as in so many epics of the era, we are confronted not with history but with myth—specifically, the myth of America as a reluctant, benevolent superpower. By 1959, the United States was no longer an isolationist republic but the torchbearer of Western civilization, standing vigilant against the twin specters of godless Communism and decolonial unrest. And yet, the uneasy conscience of empire-making seeped into these films in ways their creators could not entirely control.

Take, for instance, the Romans of Ben-Hur. They are ostensibly the villains, decadent and cruel, presiding over their subjects with an iron fist. But look closer, and you’ll see their resemblance to a certain other global hegemon: their technological prowess, their sprawling reach, their smug conviction that their way of life is the pinnacle of human achievement. And yet, for all their might, the Romans are hollow, their society already in decline. The message, whether intentional or not, is clear: America, beware. Empires crumble under the weight of their own contradictions.

And what of the Arabs, those swarthy figures from central casting who populate the background of Ben-Hur and countless other films of the era? They are either exoticized as noble savages or reduced to comic relief, their humanity flattened into caricature. These portrayals were not merely lazy but ideological, reinforcing the idea of the Middle East as a backward region in need of Western intervention—a narrative that dovetailed neatly with America’s burgeoning interest in the region’s oil reserves. The Arabs in Ben-Hur are not real people; they are a pretext, a justification for the West’s paternalistic gaze.

Then there is the film’s infamous subtext, the simmering tension between Judah Ben-Hur and Messala, which Vidal himself gleefully claimed credit for. Here we find another reflection in the House of Mirrors: the unspoken queerness that permeates so many of these epics, lurking just beneath the surface like a whispered secret. The relationship between Judah and Messala crackles with a fervor that transcends friendship, yet the film cannot name it for what it is. To do so would be unthinkable in 1959, an era defined by McCarthyite purges and the Lavender Scare. Instead, their bond is sublimated into rivalry, their love transformed into hatred, a tragic casualty of a culture too fearful to confront itself.

And then, of course, there is the bomb. The specter of nuclear annihilation looms large over every frame of Ben-Hur, though it is never mentioned. The chariot race, with its thunderous violence and apocalyptic energy, is a microcosm of the Cold War itself: a contest of wills in which there can be only one victor, and the stakes are nothing less than the survival of civilization. The crucifixion scene, with its somber skies and anguished cries, feels less like a historical reenactment and more like a prophecy—a reminder that humanity’s greatest threat is not external but internal, the darkness within.

In the end, Ben-Hur is less a story of redemption than a reflection of America’s contradictions: its yearning for moral clarity and its complicity in imperial violence, its embrace of progress and its terror of change, its belief in its own exceptionalism and its gnawing fear of decline. The House of Mirrors offers no escape, only endless refractions of the same uncomfortable truths. And like Judah Ben-Hur, we find ourselves racing in circles, searching for salvation in a world that refuses to give it.

If Vidal were here, he might chuckle at the absurdity of it all—the grandiosity, the self-deception, the unspoken truths flickering on the edges of the frame. And then he would turn back to the mirror, not to admire himself, but to remind us that the reflection is always more revealing than the image we wish to project.

Ah, indeed—ultimately, aren’t we all a bit Ben-Hur? Princes in our own minds, parading through life with the polished regalia of self-importance, only to find ourselves stripped bare, like Judah, of the very identity we so carefully cultivated. Forced to manufacture something new, something more acceptable, as the world pulls at us from every direction, demanding that we play our part in the grand spectacle of existence. This is the cruel joke that life plays on us all. We spend our youth pretending to be royalty, wrapped in the mythologies we inherit, and by middle age, if we’re fortunate, we realize we are but actors on a stage, manipulating our own masks to survive.

It’s the great tragedy of the human condition—this ceaseless reinvention. We wear the identities others give us, like Roman togas, snug and suffocating, and then, when it suits us, we strip them off and try to emerge as something more noble, more pure. But we cannot escape the deep, existential tension between who we are and who we think we ought to be. The empire, in this case, isn’t just Rome or America—it’s the vast machinery of social expectation, culture, history, and even our own illusions, grinding us into shapes that feel more comfortable, but never quite real.

What Vidal would gleefully point out is the deep hypocrisy at the heart of this process. We, like Judah, inherit a world that demands we embrace its imperialistic vision: that we are conquerors, masters of our own fate, and yet we are constantly bound by the very chains we claim to have broken. We dress ourselves in the armor of success, of identity, and yet, just as Ben-Hur strips away the layers of Roman civility to reveal the brutal core beneath, our manufactured selves are eventually undone by the contradictions within. No amount of polished ambition, no matter how grand our chariot race or how lofty our cross, will absolve us of the deeper, unspoken truths we are too terrified to face.

What Vidal would savor, in his signature style, is the delicious irony: we all become, in our way, “Romans”—empire-builders without the empire, strutting as if we are masters of fate, only to be confronted, as Judah is, with the realization that we are nothing more than our particular cultural constructions, endlessly colliding with each other. Ben-Hur is not merely a story of redemption; it is the story of the human condition itself. Every empire, every identity we forge is, in the end, just another layer of makeup on the face of a person who cannot escape the fact of being mortal, subject to time and decay. Yet, like Judah, we keep racing, never realizing that the prize was always a reflection of our own constructed desires—desires that, like the empire itself, are destined to crumble.

Hallmark Movies

In the banal, saccharine world of Hallmark movies, we find, paradoxically, a profound confrontation with the abyss of Being itself. These films, with their predictable plots and saccharine sentimentality, seem to offer a kitsch escape from existential dread. But in their very banality lies the mechanism by which they reveal the Heideggerian truth of Dasein—that is, our being-thrown into the world.

Consider the archetypal Hallmark protagonist: the career-driven woman who leaves the big city to rediscover “what really matters” in her quaint hometown. On the surface, this is the bourgeois fantasy of returning to authenticity, of escaping the alienation of modernity. Yet Heidegger teaches us that authenticity is not found in external trappings—whether rural or urban—but in the confrontation with our own finitude, the Sein-zum-Tode (being-towards-death).

In this light, the Hallmark movie is not a return to authenticity but its negation. By structuring the protagonist’s world around clichés and stereotypes, the genre enforces what Heidegger would call Das Man, the “they” of everydayness, the inauthentic mode of existence where one avoids confronting the groundlessness of one’s being. The Christmas lights, the snow-covered streets, the inevitable kiss at the town square—all these are rituals of avoidance, not moments of authentic being.

And yet! There is a twist. In their relentless repetition and artificiality, these films also gesture towards a kind of radical emptiness. The overly constructed “perfect moments” become too perfect, and thus uncanny. We, the audience, start to suspect that the town, the love story, the holiday spirit—all of it—is hollow, an empty shell that conceals nothing but its own constructedness.

Here, the Hallmark movie inadvertently becomes a confrontation with das Nichts—the Nothing. It does not provide meaning but instead shows us the void around which meaning circulates. Like the Heideggerian clearing, it offers a space in which Being is revealed—but what is revealed is the vacuity of the rituals we construct to avoid our finitude.

The difference between Hallmark movies and “art movies,” or what we might call “serious cinema,” lies not in their ability to reflect the human condition but in the strategies they deploy to confront or conceal it. If Hallmark movies are the ideological opium of the masses, art movies are the bad conscience of the bourgeois subject, forcing them to confront the truth they would rather ignore. But, of course, the dialectic is never so simple.

Hallmark movies, as we discussed, are ideological in the purest sense—they create a fantasy that denies the inherent antagonisms of existence. Their simplicity and predictability anesthetize us, smoothing over the chaos and contingency of life with comforting rituals: the big-city career woman always finds love, the struggling small-town bakery is always saved. They allow us to believe, for a moment, that the world makes sense, that things fall into place if we only “rediscover the magic of Christmas.”

Art movies, on the other hand, revel in the gaps and fissures of existence. They expose the fractures beneath the surface: alienation, despair, the absurdity of human relationships. Think of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, where the boundary between self and other dissolves into an unbearable void, or Tarkovsky’s Stalker, which confronts us with the inscrutable and indifferent nature of the “Zone.” Art cinema often shatters narrative coherence, leaving us with ambiguity, incompletion, and unresolved tension. This, ostensibly, is its hardcore nature: it refuses the ideological comfort of closure.

But here is the twist: art movies can also become ideological. Their refusal to comfort, their embrace of ambiguity, can itself become a fetish. The viewer of art cinema might pat themselves on the back for being “cultured,” for seeing through the kitsch of Hallmark movies, but this too is a form of ideological fantasy. The art film connoisseur often inhabits a similar position to the Hallmark viewer: they are reassured, not by the world making sense, but by the feeling of having seen through its nonsensicality.

To put it bluntly: Hallmark movies tell us that life is simple, while art movies tell us that life is complex. Both, however, risk avoiding the true hardcore question: what do we do with this complexity?

The horseshoe analogy falters here because the core mode of engagement with Hallmark and art movies is fundamentally different. Hallmark movies don’t just offer fantasy; they provide a step-by-step manual for acting out that fantasy. They say, “Here is what you must do to align yourself with this idealized, prepackaged version of the good life: bake cookies, decorate the tree, fall in love in a snowstorm.” It’s ideology in its most prescriptive form—a checklist of symbolic gestures that promise fulfillment if followed.

Art movies, by contrast, don’t give you a script. Instead, they force you to confront why you even want a script in the first place. The director’s personal note—whether explicit or implicit in the film—functions as a meta-statement: “The world doesn’t make sense, but here’s what I did to cope. I made this. What will you do?” It’s an invitation not to perform a set of symbolic acts but to grapple with the impossibility of such acts ever being sufficient.

Take, for example, Bergman’s Wild Strawberries or even Antonioni’s Blow-Up. Both films deal with existential disorientation, but they don’t end in nihilistic despair. Instead, they gesture towards the necessity of creating your own meaning—whether through art, memory, or a conscious return to some kind of routine. The protagonist in these films doesn’t resolve their crisis by following a script; they do it by embracing the absurd and making sense of their reality, however provisionally.

Hallmark movies, then, are about doing without thinking. They reduce life to a set of externalized rituals. Art movies, on the other hand, are about thinking in order to rediscover the meaning of doing. The “meaningful routine” you mention is a key point: it’s not the routine itself that matters but the fact that it arises from a conscious reckoning with chaos.

Here’s where Hallmark and art movies diverge radically:

• Hallmark says, “Follow this preordained path, and you’ll find happiness.”

• Art cinema says, “Happiness doesn’t exist as a universal formula, but here’s how someone—me, the director, or this fictional character—found their way toward something like meaning. Maybe you can do the same.”

Art cinema acknowledges that meaning is not given—it’s made. And this making is hard, messy, and deeply personal. That’s why art movies often end with a return to some sort of imperfect routine—it’s not a resolution but a recognition that we must actively choose to live, even in the face of absurdity.

Hallmark movies are ideological because they obscure this effort, pretending that meaning can be bought pre-assembled, like a flat-pack Ikea Christmas. Art movies are existential because they insist that meaning must be constructed from scratch, piece by piece, through the labor of being alive.

Perhaps the truly radical act this Christmas is to watch Hallmark movies not as escapism, but as a meditation on the void—to gaze into their glossy, snow-covered surfaces and see, reflected back, the inescapable truth of our own being-towards-death.

The Internal Clock

The internal clock—the rhythm of attention and expectation honed by our optimized cognitive processes—demands precision. A narrative must hit its emotional or intellectual beat at just the right moment to captivate the human mind. Television series, by their very nature, are purpose-built to meet these demands. Unlike books, which are often sprawling, open-ended, and subject to the variable pacing of individual readers, television is a medium engineered for synchronization. It shapes time into predictable units, each one calibrated to deliver satisfaction within the narrow window our internal clock anticipates.

This is the triumph of television over many genre books: its ability to structure narrative beats in ways that match the optimized attention span of modern audiences. The episodic nature of television mirrors the rhythms of daily life—pauses, climaxes, and resolutions, all packaged into neat, consumable chunks. It is not merely a matter of convenience but a reflection of the medium’s essence. Television cannot afford to meander; its survival depends on capturing attention immediately and holding it steadily until the prescribed endpoint.

By contrast, the works of P.G. Wodehouse, Douglas Adams, and other literary humorists thrive in a space that television cannot easily inhabit: the mind’s theater. Their brilliance lies in the way their prose invites the reader’s imagination to supply comedic timing, emphasis, and nuance. Wodehouse’s intricate wordplay, Adams’s layered absurdities—these are joys that unfold uniquely in the act of reading, where the pace is dictated by the reader’s own internal rhythm. Television, constrained by its linear delivery, often flattens these subtleties into caricature or oversimplification, losing the intellectual interplay between writer and reader that defines great literary humor.

This flattening extends to adaptations of serious literature as well. Complex novels, rich with intellectual depth or intricate internal monologues, struggle to find their footing on screen. The visual medium often over-explains or reduces these elements to surface-level spectacle. Consider Foundation: Asimov’s sprawling meditation on history and inevitability is reimagined as a character-driven drama, emphasizing relationships and action over philosophical inquiry. While this makes the story accessible to a broader audience, it also narrows its scope, sacrificing the expansive intellectual engagement of the original.

Neil Postman reminds us that every medium imposes its own biases on communication. Television excels at immediate, emotionally resonant storytelling, but it does so at the cost of the interiority and complexity that books provide. To assume that one is inherently superior to the other is to misunderstand the nature of media. Each serves different human needs, shaped by the inherent strengths and weaknesses of their form. But in our increasingly image-driven culture, the dominance of television risks leaving us with stories that satisfy the clock but neglect the soul.

The triumph of television, and now streaming platforms, lies not just in their mastery of narrative beats but in their ability to condition audiences to expect stories to conform to these rhythms. Over time, this synchronization between medium and audience has created a feedback loop. Television trains us to crave stories that cater to our optimized internal clocks, and in turn, we reward those that deliver, perpetuating the dominance of immediacy, spectacle, and emotional highs.

This shift has profound implications for how we engage with narrative and, more broadly, with complexity. Television’s reliance on pacing and resolution means that ambiguity, subtlety, and slow-building introspection often fall by the wayside. In literature, readers are free to pause, reflect, and revisit earlier passages, allowing for deeper intellectual engagement. Television and film, bound by the relentless forward march of time, rarely afford such luxuries. The medium prioritizes clarity and immediacy, which can impoverish stories that rely on nuance or demand active interpretation.

This isn’t merely a matter of storytelling; it reflects a broader cultural transformation. As we shift from a print-based culture, with its emphasis on critical thinking and individual interpretation, to a screen-based culture, we risk privileging passive consumption over active engagement. Television and streaming excel at delivering pre-digested narratives that require little effort to understand, reinforcing a cultural preference for convenience over challenge. In this way, the medium not only reflects our optimized attention spans but also shapes them, narrowing our tolerance for complexity and our patience for delayed gratification.

What does this mean for literature? As more stories are adapted for the screen, we may see a growing divide between narratives designed for visual media and those that remain firmly rooted in text. The works of Wodehouse, Adams, and other literary giants may increasingly become artifacts of a bygone era—relics of a time when humor and complexity thrived in the interplay between writer and reader. And yet, their persistence reminds us of something vital: that there are still corners of human experience that television, for all its strengths, cannot fully capture.

If Postman were here to comment on this shift, he might argue that we are losing more than we realize. The optimization of our internal clocks for television storytelling is not merely a technological innovation; it is a reprogramming of our cognitive habits. As we tune our lives to the rhythms of visual media, we risk neglecting the slower, more contemplative beats that once defined how we understood the world—and ourselves.

Narcissus and Psyche

In this analysis of Narcissus and Psyche, we will explore their stories through the lens of cybernetics, systems theory, and distributed consciousness. These frameworks focus on how individuals relate to their environment, the feedback loops they generate, and the mental processes that connect them within larger systems of interaction. Distributed consciousness suggests that different aspects of the psyche are not confined to a single, unified consciousness but are spread across various elements, each influencing the other. Through this perspective, Narcissus and Psyche can be seen as representing distinct, interacting facets of consciousness—self-absorption and relational openness—highlighting the complex dynamics that shape human experience.

For Gábor Bódy, the sky is not a backdrop but a plane of immanence, a ceaseless becoming, traversed and transformed throughout Narcissus and Psyche (1980). In this sprawling assemblage of period drama and mythic resonance, the figures of Erzsébet (Patricia Adiani) and Laci (Udo Kier)—Hungarian poets caught in the turbulence of the Napoleonic Wars—emerge less as characters than as virtual nodes. Their passions, their agonies, their gestures fold the historical into the mythological, the personal into the cosmic. The film’s title maps Narcissus and Psyche not as fixed identities but as refrains, expressive modulations of the eternal return of gendered becoming: woman as metamorphosis, artist as self-fracture. “I believe in neither the Roman nor the Helvetian God,” declares Laci, “only in the aesthetic and historic authority of the Greek-Latin gods.” Yet this appeal to an archaic authority is deterritorialized by Bódy’s camera, which captures clouds not as symbols but as pure flux: an infinite series of patterns, intensities, and movements, defying any fixed organization of the heavens.

Against the sedimented codes of his contemporaries—the slow, mordant gestures that would come to define Hungarian cinema—Bódy sets loose a machine of dizzying velocities, which J. Hoberman aptly describes as “products from an alternate dimension.” His earlier American Torso (1975) similarly refuses linearity, folding the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 into the Civil War through a cinema of temporal fissures. Here, the “light editing” method—scratches, exposures, disruptions—decomposes the filmic surface, producing not a narrative of history but a delirial archaeology of time, a flickering palimpsest that erases itself even as it inscribes.

In Narcissus and Psyche, Bódy radicalizes this process. Across its four-hour duration, the film oscillates between Napoleonic set-pieces and kaleidoscopic disruptions, each scene an assemblage of contradictory forces. Scrupulous blocking dissolves into anarchic editing, compositional coherence into machinic frenzy. This is not a cinema of equilibrium but of tremor, vibration, and excess. Bódy’s insistence on perpetual movement—on the trembling of every frame—anticipates his embrace of cybernetics and video, which he celebrated for their capacity to “represent chance.” His cinema does not narrate but diagrams, organizing chaos into the poetry of contingency. It is a cinema of the virtual, a praxis of the future, where history liquefies into an aleatory field of possibility.

• Narcissus would represent the dangers of a closed feedback loop that becomes isolating and self-destructive. In Bateson’s terms, Narcissus’ relationship to his reflection lacks any external validation or “other” to break the cycle. The mirror image feeds back only what Narcissus projects, creating a self-reinforcing loop that ultimately leads to his downfall. Bateson would interpret Narcissus’ fixation as an example of how a system that closes off from meaningful feedback eventually leads to entropy and collapse. Without an open system to allow for dynamic interaction and learning, Narcissus is trapped within a self-referential echo, illustrating the notion that mental systems require diversity and exchange to sustain themselves. Narcissus is essentially caught in a “schismogenic” process—one where the repeated interactions (his gaze) escalate into a pathological fixation.

• For Psyche, we could focus on her journey as an adaptive learning process within a dynamic system. Psyche’s relationship with Cupid is initially shrouded in mystery, and her trials represent different forms of learning and adaptation. Each task Psyche faces is a feedback mechanism that teaches her about herself, her limitations, and her desires. We see these tasks as a form of double bind, where she must navigate contradictory instructions or impossible choices (e.g., loving Cupid without seeing him). Her perseverance through these binds reflects an evolution of mind in the Batesonian sense—she moves through different stages of learning and understanding her environment, shifting from dependence on rules imposed by the gods to an internalized wisdom about love, trust, and resilience. Psyche’s journey thus represents an open system where feedback (each task) is assimilated, transformed, and adapted to produce growth.

In this sense, Narcissus warns against systems that close off from external interaction, becoming stagnant and self-destructive. Psyche, in contrast, illustrates a self-regulating system that adapts to new information, learning from challenges and maintaining openness to external forces (represented by the gods and Cupid). We can interpret her journey as a positive feedback loop—each task reinforces her capacity to adapt, grow, and learn, allowing her ultimately to transcend her previous state and reach a more integrated form of being.

In summary, using this interpretation would see Narcissus as an example of a rigid system failing due to self-isolation, while Psyche embodies the flexible, adaptive system that thrives by interacting dynamically with its environment, using feedback to achieve a more evolved state of consciousness.

Psyche’s punishment

Psyche’s story includes significant trials imposed by Aphrodite (or Venus in the Roman version). Aphrodite’s jealousy of Psyche’s beauty and her love for Eros (Cupid) sets up the sequence of punishments Psyche must endure. Each trial Aphrodite demands is designed to be impossible, reinforcing Psyche’s subservient and “inferior” status, and they are intended to keep Psyche from reaching her beloved.

We could understand this dynamic as part of a system of power and control where Aphrodite represents an entrenched authority figure attempting to impose limits on Psyche. Aphrodite’s attempts to control Psyche are an example of hierarchical structure in a system, with rigid boundaries where older powers seek to enforce their dominance over emerging ones.

From this perspective:

1. Aphrodite’s Punishments as Control Mechanisms: Bateson might view each task given by Aphrodite as a form of control intended to enforce conformity and maintain the established hierarchy. Each trial Psyche undergoes can be seen as a way of testing and reinforcing her “place” within the system. This dynamic mirrors cybernetic feedback loops where systems can become either adaptable or self-reinforcing. Aphrodite, as a representative of a “closed” system, seeks to keep the old structure intact and prevent new connections (such as the union of Psyche and Eros) from disrupting her status.

2. Psyche’s Adaptive Responses: In overcoming each trial, Psyche demonstrates second-order learning, where she evolves by interpreting her challenges differently rather than simply repeating old patterns. Each task she completes reflects her ability to adapt to a seemingly rigid system. For example, when faced with impossible tasks like sorting seeds, gathering golden fleece, or descending into the underworld, Psyche accepts help from external sources (ants, a reed, or divine interventions). This openness to assistance and flexibility mirrors The ideal of an open, learning-oriented system that incorporates external input, adapts, and grows rather than becoming fixed or rigid.

3. Reconfiguration of the System: Psyche’s final transformation into an immortal being, allowed by Zeus, can be seen as a reconfiguration of the hierarchical system. In the end, the “closed” system symbolized by Aphrodite’s dominance is partially dissolved to accommodate a new structure where Psyche, initially a mortal outsider, becomes integrated as an immortal, equal partner with Eros. Bateson would likely interpret this as a system that has evolved to maintain balance by incorporating new elements, adapting in a way that sustains the whole.

Narcissus and Psyche

In this terms, Psyche could be seen as the literal “psyche” of Narcissus—the adaptive, relational potential within him that he never realizes. Narcissus and Psyche are like two parts of a system: Narcissus represents the rigid, self-referential part that refuses to change, while Psyche embodies the open, flexible part that learns and evolves through experience.

If Narcissus and Psyche were viewed as two aspects of a single mind, Narcissus would be the isolated loop, endlessly feeding back on itself without external input or growth. Psyche, however, would be the part of the mind that engages with the world, adapts, and draws on new information to create meaning beyond itself.

Thus, in this framework, Psyche is what Narcissus’s psyche could be if it escaped its own self-imposed isolation. Psyche’s journey represents a mind that can learn, adjust, and expand—traits Narcissus lacks as he remains trapped in his closed system. If he could integrate Psyche’s openness, Narcissus might escape his self-absorption and connect with a broader, more balanced existence.

Greek Myths and Distributed Conciousness

Greek myths can indeed be understood as an example of distributed consciousness. Rather than having a single, unified perspective or consciousness, Greek mythology presents a universe where different aspects of human experience, emotion, and thought are distributed across a pantheon of gods, demigods, and mortals, each embodying distinct traits and drives.

In this sense, characters like Narcissus and Psyche can be viewed as parts of a larger, distributed psyche—each representing a unique aspect of human consciousness and inner conflict. Narcissus embodies self-reflection taken to the extreme, a form of consciousness that becomes so self-focused it loses touch with others and reality itself. Psyche, on the other hand, symbolizes a consciousness that learns through challenges, gradually developing resilience, adaptability, and connection. Together, they reflect a balance of forces: self-absorption versus relational openness, rigidity versus transformation.

In Greek myths, this distribution of consciousness means that no single character encapsulates the entire human experience. Instead, each god, hero, and mortal personifies a different facet—love, jealousy, wisdom, vanity, courage, etc.—interacting in ways that mirror the internal tensions and synergies within a single mind. When these characters clash, ally, or transform, they create a narrative representation of an inner world where different impulses and perspectives continuously negotiate with one another.

This distributed consciousness also reflects a worldview where human identity is not isolated but embedded in a broader web of relationships, emotions, and archetypal forces. Myths like those of Narcissus and Psyche can thus be seen as metaphors for the complex interplay within an individual’s psyche, showing how different “selves” or drives interact, conflict, or harmonize to shape our experience and behavior. Through this lens, Greek mythology captures the fragmented, multifaceted nature of consciousness itself, showing how meaning and identity arise from an intricate network rather than a single source.

Tulsa King

Scene: A smoky, dimly lit Oklahoma bar. Sylvester Stallone and Taylor Sheridan, cowboy hat and all, sit across from each other, kicking around ideas for Tulsa King

Stallone:

Alright, picture this: I’m a retired mobster, right? Everyone’s scared. I walk into a bar, bam, punches start flyin’. Next thing you know, I’m running the joint. Think Rocky but with a… Western flair.

Sheridan:

Tulsa’s a slow-cookin’ kind of town. What if your character’s tough as nails, sure, but he’s also a softie for wild mustangs and campfires? We go for Rocky IV training montage but with lasso practice at sunrise.

Stallone:

Oh, I’m feelin’ it! And when the local drug cartel moves in, I’m kickin’ down doors like in First Blood — cowboy boots and all. And I’ve got a long-lost son I don’t know about. We call him “Dusty.”

Sheridan:

What if Dusty’s the exact opposite of you, like some sensitive poet with a six-shooter?

Stallone:

Ha! And I gotta toughen him up for the showdown with the cartel. Think… me, in a ten-gallon hat, throwin’ haymakers in a cattle pen, just to show him what it means to be a man. Like a father-son Cobra moment, y’know?

Sheridan:

Yeah, yeah. And the cartel? Real desperados. We’re talking outlaws who roll up to town in trucks with bull horns on the hoods and play mariachi songs at full blast. But they’ve got high-tech weapons. Oklahoma arms race. A spaghetti Western arms race.

Stallone:

Now you’re talkin’! And I gotta take ‘em out, one by one, John Wick-style. Only with lassos and cowboy punches. I end up facing the kingpin on top of an oil rig, the sun settin’,

Sheridan:

Perfect! You’re drenched in oil, fists raised — and Dusty, your estranged son, shows up to save you at the last second with a rodeo rope trick he learned from a wandering drifter.

Stallone:

Yeah, we can call him “Whiskey Pete.” Real mysterious.

Stallone leans back, crossing his arms, as Sheridan raises an eyebrow.

Stallone:

Look, Taylor, cowboy mafia is great and all, but let’s be real — you’re steppin’ on my territory here. Lone-wolf vendettas? Heroic dads with rugged pasts? I wrote the book on that back in First Blood. I should be licensing you this stuff.

Sheridan:

smirking Sly, you wrote the book? I been making brooding cowboys on horseback chase personal demons across desert canyons while you were still chuggin’ sequels of Creek on Philly streets. I’ve got a copyright on “gruff stoicism in dust storms.” That’s all me.

Stallone:

Gruff stoicism? Please. I practically invented it with a single look in Rambo III. Plus, I pioneered fighting people in ridiculous locations, like Russian snowfields and burning jungles. Oil rigs? My idea. You think you’re the first one to put a showdown in the middle of a wasteland?

Sheridan:

chuckles, shaking his head Alright, fine, but I bet you never fought a whole cartel on horseback with nothing but a lasso and a six-shooter. That’s cowboy royalty. My royalties, to be exact.

Stallone:

laughs Cowboy royalty? Give me a break! A cowboy mafia is just a mob in leather vests, and if we’re talkin’ rights, who’s owed something here? I mean, I’ve been punching bad guys since before you could hold a pen, Taylor. You should be payin’ me for every time you put a six-pack abs scene in there.

Sheridan:

leaning forward Listen, Sly, I’ve got a lifetime copyright on “sunset scowls” and “long, introspective stares.” Every time you get lost in thought while holding a revolver, that’s me! And don’t even think about throwing in a dead wife or something to amp up the stakes. I own tragic backstories and gritty redemptions.

Stallone:

Tragic backstories? Buddy, that’s my whole catalog. I was broodin’ over the past and pulling off daring rescues when your cowboys were still playin’ rodeo clown. You wouldn’t even have tragic backstory scenes if I hadn’t made ‘em iconic.

Sheridan:

rolling his eyes You act like you invented pain and revenge. You’re welcome, by the way, for letting you ride this cowboy resurgence. You don’t see me trying to muscle in on your Italian mobsters… even though, technically, my cowboys could kick their butts any day.

Stallone:

Kick their butts? My mobsters would bury those cowboys under a desert sagebrush without breaking a sweat! You ever see me lose a fight on screen? Exactly. Besides, no one’s out-brooding me in a landscape scene, no matter how big your ranch is.

Sheridan:

Alright, Rocky. You take your brooding, but I’m keepin’ all the slow-walk-out-of-the-smoke shots. I swear, every time your character struts in slow-mo, I’m charging you double. And forget about the mysterious outlaw routine. I’ve patented those.

Stallone:

laughs Oh, c’mon! You can’t patent the mysterious outlaw, Taylor. Next, you’ll be tellin’ me you trademarked the “man with a past” shtick. Newsflash, buddy — that’s my bread and butter!

Sheridan:

Alright, Mr. Bread and Butter. You keep the mobsters and muscle. I’ll keep the sunsets, the horses, and the dusty streets. And for the record, you gotta pay up every time you monologue with a distant mountain in the background.

Stallone:

grins Deal. But you’re cuttin’ me in on every cowboy-throws-a-punch scene from here on out. And no arguments about who punches harder. We both know the answer to that one.

Sheridan:

Fine, Sly. Just don’t come crying to me when my cowboy mafia runs circles around your mobsters in a showdown. And don’t even think about getting sentimental over a prairie. That’s strictly Sheridan turf.

Stallone:

smirks Alright, partner, deal. But just remember — if there’s a big explosion, I get first billing.

Star Wars/Deleuze Guattari

To speak of Star Wars themes and machines like into Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical concepts, we can draw on their ideas of assemblages, lines of flight, desiring machines, multiplicities, and the concept of the Body without Organs (BwO). The universe of Star Wars can be viewed through the lens of these dynamic forces and virtual realities, with both the Death Star and Tatooine serving as perfect embodiments of Deleuze and Guattari’s radical views on power, desire, and escape.

The Death Star as a Desiring Machine and Apparatus of Capture

The Death Star is not just a technological marvel but a powerful representation of what Deleuze and Guattari describe as a “desiring machine” and an “apparatus of capture.” In Anti-Oedipus, desiring machines are the elements of production in the unconscious—powerful forces that structure reality through flows of desire. The Death Star, as a massive weapon, embodies these processes of desire, not just for destruction, but as a projection of the Empire’s will to control, to dominate, and to suppress any lines of flight. It desires not only the annihilation of planets but the complete deterritorialization of space itself, flattening any resistance by dissolving entire worlds into cosmic dust.

The Death Star also acts as an “apparatus of capture” in that it represents the Empire’s attempt to capture and control all flows of desire in the galaxy. It is the ultimate tool of repression, a territorial machine that seeks to dominate, territorialize, and shape the galaxy according to the Emperor’s vision of total control. In this sense, it is also the product of an arborescent, hierarchical power structure, working against rhizomatic networks like the Rebel Alliance, which operates through decentralized, mobile resistance.

Tatooine as the Body without Organs (BwO)

Tatooine, in contrast to the cold, mechanical nature of the Death Star, can be seen as a Body without Organs (BwO)—a space of potentiality, intensity, and a raw, desiring surface. In Deleuze and Guattari’s terms, the BwO is a plane of immanence, a space unstructured by the rigid codes and stratifications of organized bodies and systems. Tatooine, as a desert planet, is vast, unformed, and open to a multiplicity of desires and possibilities. It is both barren and full of potential, a place where figures like Luke Skywalker, Anakin, and Obi-Wan emerge as powerful singularities with transformative destinies.

Tatooine resists the stratification and overcoding that is imposed by the Empire, and it is no coincidence that key figures of resistance and change—Luke and Anakin—begin their journeys here. The harsh environment of Tatooine, with its twin suns and constant exposure to danger, reflects the intensity of the BwO, which exists outside the norms of civilization and the oppressive structures of imperial power. Tatooine is an uncharted plane, an open horizon for lines of flight and becoming.

Lines of Flight and Nomadic Resistance in the Rebel Alliance

The Rebel Alliance represents a rhizomatic resistance to the Empire’s arborescent, hierarchical structures. Deleuze and Guattari contrast rhizomatic forms of organization with arborescent ones—while arborescent structures are rigid, centralized, and top-down (like the Empire and the Death Star), rhizomatic structures are decentralized, adaptive, and connected through multiple nodes, much like the Rebel cells scattered across the galaxy.

The Rebel Alliance constantly moves along lines of flight, evading the Empire’s apparatus of capture. Their base on Yavin 4, hidden and mobile, exemplifies the logic of deterritorialization—they avoid being pinned down, operating through a nomadic logic that keeps them outside the Empire’s control. The Death Star, as the ultimate territorializing machine, tries to capture and destroy these lines of flight, but the Rebellion’s rhizomatic structure proves difficult to contain.

The Force itself, as tapped into by the Jedi, can be seen as a line of flight—a transcendental force that offers an alternative to the strict codes and controls imposed by the Sith and the Empire. It opens up new dimensions and possibilities for existence, breaking away from the overcoded, stratified reality the Empire tries to impose.

Planets as Multiplicities and Territorial Assemblages

Each planet in Star Wars—whether it’s Coruscant, Hoth, or Tatooine—can be viewed as a territorial assemblage, a multiplicity that exists within the complex dynamics of stratification, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization. Planets, in the Star Wars universe, are more than mere settings—they represent distinct assemblages of forces, each with its own flows of desire, power, and conflict.

  • Coruscant is a planet that has been fully territorialized and stratified into a single, hierarchical assemblage, the ultimate arborescent structure where the Empire’s control reaches its zenith. It is a planet of complete organization, where every level, from the Senate to the underworld, is overcoded with the logic of imperial power.
  • Hoth is deterritorialized space, a cold, empty wasteland where life struggles to exist. Yet, like Tatooine, it offers a line of flight for the Rebellion. The Rebel base on Hoth is temporary, nomadic, always prepared to move, reflecting the fluidity and adaptability of rhizomatic resistance.

Each of these planets can also be seen as a multiplicity—not in the numerical sense, but in the sense that each represents a dynamic, heterogeneous whole made up of varying layers of history, desire, and power. Planets in the Star Wars universe are not static—they are caught up in the flows of becoming, constantly shifting through processes of territorialization and deterritorialization, much like Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of a multiplicity, which is always in flux, always in the process of becoming something other.

The Force as Virtual Power and the Line of Flight

The Force, central to the mythology of Star Wars, can be understood as the virtual—a concept Deleuze uses to describe the field of potentiality that transcends the actual. The Force represents the immanent, underlying field of potential that binds the galaxy together, accessible to those who can tap into its power. The Jedi and the Sith, in different ways, access this virtual field, but while the Sith seek to stratify and control it, the Jedi are more aligned with its natural flows, using it to create rather than destroy.

In Deleuze and Guattari’s terms, the Force could be seen as the ultimate line of flight—an operator of transformation and becoming that allows those who access it to move beyond the actual and into the virtual, into new forms of existence and power. The Force opens up new possibilities for action, breaking away from the limitations of the physical world and offering a path toward transcendence.

Conclusion

By viewing Star Wars through the lens of Deleuze and Guattari, we can see its universe as a complex interplay of forces, desires, and machines. The Death Star and the Empire represent systems of control, territorialization, and arborescent power, while the Rebel Alliance, the Force, and planets like Tatooine represent the potential for lines of flight, rhizomatic resistance, and the multiplicity of becoming. This philosophical perspective reveals the deeper dynamics of desire, power, and escape that underlie the cosmic struggles of Star Wars.

Making Movies

Making your own movie is a bit like algebra—a creative endeavor with straightforward steps you can learn and apply, like plugging numbers into equations. It’s all very comforting, if not a tad boring. You follow the rules, and voilà! You’ve got a film.

But distribution? Ah, that’s where it gets murky—like calculus. Suddenly, you’re grappling with derivatives and integrals, trying to figure out how to get your film in front of an audience. It’s not just about creation anymore; it’s about optimizing your reach, like a mathlete trying to find the best angle to win a competition. You think you’re done, and then you realize you have to navigate the labyrinthine world of marketing and platforms, feeling like you’re solving for x in a room full of unknowns.

And then we come to the pièce de résistance: alchemy. This is where the real magic happens, my friend. It’s not about merely sustaining success; it’s about transforming something mundane into pure gold. Making a movie and getting it out there is one thing, but the alchemical process of turning it into a cultural phenomenon is an art in itself. You mix creativity with marketing, sprinkle in a bit of luck, and—poof!—you’ve got something that resonates, that sticks in people’s minds long after the credits roll.

It’s about taking that raw footage and, through sheer will and a dash of the unexpected, creating an experience that transcends the sum of its parts. It’s a mystical process, really, akin to how lead turns into gold, or how I turn a simple dinner date into an existential crisis. In the end, it’s all about finding that secret formula to transform your creation into something truly transformative, capturing the audience’s imagination in ways you never thought possible.

Can you really perform alchemy in an empty theater? It’s a question that feels philosophical, doesn’t it? Picture it: you’ve crafted your cinematic masterpiece, but here you are, alone in a vast, vacant auditorium, the seats eerily silent, waiting for an audience that never arrives. You could shout your genius into the void, but the only response is the echo of your own insecurities.

Now, does alchemy make a sound in an empty room? It’s a bit like asking if a tree falls in a forest with no one around to hear it. The magic, the transformation of art into something profound—it exists, yet the absence of witnesses makes you wonder: is it real? The alchemical process thrives on connection, on reactions, on the spark between creator and audience. In solitude, can you truly transform something into gold? Or is it merely a quiet longing, a whisper of potential lost in the silence?

The empty theater is a paradox. It’s a space ripe with possibility, yet devoid of the very element that breathes life into your creation. Without an audience, the alchemy feels incomplete. You mix the elements—imagination, creativity, emotion—but without anyone there to experience it, do those ingredients even matter? Perhaps in that silence, alchemy becomes a contemplative act, a personal transformation where the artist grapples with their own thoughts rather than seeking validation from the outside world.

So yes, you can perform alchemy in an empty theater, but it’s a quiet kind of magic—an internal process that questions whether the art is truly alive if no one is there to see it. And in that stillness, you might find your own gold, but it’s a different kind of treasure—one that shines in the solitude of your mind rather than in the collective consciousness of an audience.

Sometimes, a great movie is its own calculus, effortlessly solving for distribution in a way that marketing often struggles to imitate. A film that resonates deeply with audiences finds its own pathways, generating buzz and organic interest without the heavy lifting of conventional promotion. It’s as if the story, characters, and emotional depth create a gravitational pull that draws viewers in, creating a momentum that spreads through word-of-mouth and social sharing.

In this way, the film becomes a self-sustaining entity, using its intrinsic qualities—like powerful performances, relatable themes, or striking visuals—to capture attention and inspire discussion. The audience becomes part of the equation, engaging with the content and sharing it, which amplifies its reach far beyond initial expectations.

Marketing, on the other hand, often relies on formulas and strategies that can feel contrived or forced. It attempts to imitate the alchemy of a film that naturally connects with people, but without the authentic substance, it frequently falls flat. A great movie doesn’t just rely on flashy trailers or catchy slogans; it taps into something deeper, creating an emotional resonance that compels viewers to share it with others.

Ultimately, when a film is its own calculus, it doesn’t just entertain—it transforms into a cultural phenomenon, weaving itself into conversations and experiences in a way that marketing alone cannot achieve. It’s the magic of storytelling that, when done right, finds its own way to the audience, solving for distribution without the usual complexities.