TARO, the boy ARTO by Pia Santaklaus

18 October 2008

Hi Brett,

I enjoyed today’s Cinemateque feature TARO, THE DRAGON BOY (1979) and present a few personal thoughts:

I understand this Japanese animation is an adaptation of a famous Japanese folk tale.
However, I cannot pinpoint which particular folk tale or how old that folk tale might be, but noticed this particular retelling owed a great deal to ancient Greek mythology and in particular the myth of Heracles. Until proven otherwise, I imagine this to be the case.

The Homeric heroic archetype on a great odyssey is strongly hinted in Taro, whose tale also includes fantastic personalities, creatures, beasts and challenges.

I believe TARO is based on the strong-man archetype classically found in the Heracles/Hercules story from many centuries BC. Heracles was the greatest and strongest Greek hero, the half-divine son of Zeus/Jupiter to a mortal woman. In TARO, Taro has dealings and ultimately friendship with a Red Demon who becomes the ‘Thunder God’ in the sky, not at all unlike the main traits of Zeus/Jupiter (the sky god of thunder whose symbol was the thunderbolt).

Like Hercules (and later Superman), Taro uses his super strength for good, to help save humanity. He is guided to destroy monsters, rights wrongs and perform various ‘Olympian’ services. Taro too meets an old man (The mentor archetype) who gives him purpose and further strength (equal to 100 men).

Heracles had a twin mortal brother born to his mortal mother. They shared the same mortal mother, though Heracles was also strongly involved with the goddess Hera/Juno. In the Roman telling of the Heracles story, Heracles suckled on a sleeping Goddess’s breast as his real mother was a mere mortal. In a sense, Heracles had two mothers as does Taro whose mother was a mere mortal but also a powerful dragon. Hera sent 2 serpents to kill the baby Heracles as he lay in his cot. The young babe throttled the serpents and thrived.

As a baby, Taro suckled on the milky white eye-balls of his dragon mother who consequently was left blind so that the child might thrive. Perhaps the 2 eyeballs are a variation on the serpent theme though Taro’s mother wanted to keep an eye on him –Ha! Suckling on eyeballs adds a new spin on “Eat with your eyes” or “eye-watering foods”. I understand some cultures still actually eat the eyes of various beasts and birds. Anyway, eyes are organs that detect light. In Roman mythology, Lucina was the goddess of childbirth “she who brings children into the light”.
Furthermore the Greek Goddess Artemis (also known as a goddess of light) is the Goddess of hunting, forests and fertility. While pregnant, Taro’s mother selfishly hunted for fish knowing that it would be beneficial in her state. Fish is widely recognized as a good food source for nutrients promoting good eyesight.

Taro, like Heracles was a champion who performed good deeds on his journeys, making the world a better place and learning about self-sacrifice along the way.

As with Unico, Taro seems to carry some oedipal complex. Taro imagines his mother to look like his pretty young muse friend with a musical pipe in her mouth and when Taro finally meets his dragon-mother, he must grip the horns and she says “mount me”. A later scene finds her in a bare naked state facing her son and embracing him, her full, fleshy breasts pressed in a tender hug. At one point in the movie, Taro is enveloped in snow and dying. He calls out for his Mother in this moment of crisis. Help arrives in the form of a pale horse. The iconography is not unlike that in UNICO (1979) in which the mother is seen as a white unicorn.

In TARO, a glorious flying horse is not unlike the mythical Pegasus. Incidentally, the flying white horse in TARO reminded me of the flying white unicorn in the recent screening of Tezuka’s UNICO (also 1979).

The name Hercules/Heracles itself means ‘Glory of/through Hera’ which suggests a powerful ‘maternal’ or female undercurrent in the hero’s life. Heracles was tormented by Hera as Taro is tormented in his difficult journey to find his dragon mother.

Taro meets a pretty, young girl, who plays the flute; she might be seen as Taro’s muse.
At one point Taro imagines his long-lost mother looks like this girl. She taught him modesty.

Classic Heracles iconography portrays him nude and holding a long club and later donning a lion skin to cover some of his nudity. Taro too is shown in various states of undress, genitals exposed, until he later wears a loin cloth. There may be reasons; Firstly, the boy may be entering a more mature age where innocence is replaced by experience and so for modesty’s sake, he wants to cover his own ‘sex’. Secondly, it may have to do with the concept of a superior man. In the ancient Analects by the Chinese philosopher Confucius we find three things which the superior man guards against. In youth he guards against lust (and so the modesty), then, when he is strong and the physical powers are full of vigor, he guards against quarrelsomeness and when he is old he guards against covetousness.

When Taro kills the fearsome giant ‘Black Demon’, in a sense he kills that part of him that is lustful, quarrelsome and covetous. Like Heracles, the Black Demon carried a long dangerous club.

Heracles made himself a slave and spent some years in the servitude of various persons, one being Queen Omphale of Lydia. Taro too allows this to happen as he dedicates himself to others.

The music in the film is beautiful and very classical in a Japanese sense, however in one part when Taro wanders onto the plantation of an exploitative old lady (“rich old hen”), behind a veneer of classical Japanese instrumentation can be heard the disguised yet clear Western structure of a backwater-swampy 12 bar blues as though Taro’s stay at the old lady’s rural farm was somehow akin to the Delta bluesman Robert Johnson (1911-1938) who stopped at the crossroads to make his rumored deal with the devil. Johnson himself lived on a rural plantation much of his life.

In another scene Taro enters the house of a lusty, busty, possessive woman who frightens him and Taro runs away. This may have allusions to the jealous third wife of Heracles who was instrumental in his death due to an acidic woven shirt she gave him which had destructive properties. The lusty lady in TARO also had a spinning wheel with which to weave a shirt.
In one of Heracles’ Labours he had to clean the filthy Augean horse stables and he cleverly did this task by rerouting two rivers so the filth would be washed out. Taro also is seen diverting various rivers and manipulating dams.

Various task-masters would often refuse to honour agreements made with Heracles and this too is also represented in Taro’s journey. Heracles had to capture the Erymanthian Boar. Wild boars feature in TARO, however Taro captures their hearts in a friendly way. Heracles was a Demi-God due to his strange heritage. He was not the cleverest hero, but certainly the strongest and one of the most courageous, witty and playful. Heracles was also known for his sexual prowess and for completing 12 Labors for King Eurystheus. Taro, like Heracles becomes a cultural hero. In Taro’s case, he gains great recognition by spreading the good grain (rice) to the poorer peoples.

Heracles has been connected with Melqart (Phoenician God) and Shu (Egyptian God) and it is thought that via Greco-Buddhist culture, (which developed between 4th century BCE and 5th century CE), the far east received the Heracles myth. This may be witnessed in various Japanese Buddhist temples in the Nio guardian deities. A consequence of a long chain of cultural interactions begun with Greek forays into India from the time of Alexander The Great, Indo-Greek rule was established for centuries and extended and flourished in the Hellenized empire. It is now believed that Greco-Buddhism influenced the artistic and conceptual development of Buddhism, particularly Mahayana Buddhism before Buddhism was adopted in Central and Northeastern Asia from the 1st century CE and ultimately spreading to China and Japan.

There is debate as to the earliest anthropomorphic images of Buddha; some scholars believe these images were a result of of Greco-Buddhist interaction. Before this innovation, Buddhist art was dominated by symbolic representations which didn’t portray him in human form. The Greeks worshipped human form and were probably the first to represent Buddha this way. The Greeks developed syncretic divinities, fusing together potentially incongruous religious symbols. (eg Sarapis is a God combining both Greek and Egyptian Gods). In India, the Greeks helped combine the Greek God Apollo with traits of Buddha to create a single divinity. In early sculptures, Buddha is represented with unmistakable external characteristics wearing a classic Greco-Roman toga and having curly Mediterranean hair. Gradually, this anthropomorphic representation of Buddha took on more Indian and Asian appearance. Other Buddhist deities were influenced by the Greeks. Heracles (the protector deity of Demetrius I) was the model for the Buddhist protector VAJRAPANI who was later seen as the strong Japanese protector deities NIO (seen at the entries of many Buddhist temples). It has also been suggested that the Japanese wind god FUJIN was inspired by the Greek BOREAS.

Rulers were sometimes deified by the Greeks, particularly in the wake of Alexander The Great’s far-reaching reign. This concept of god-king seems to have been absorbed by early bodhisattvas who had probably also exchanged intelectual and philosophical ideas with the Greeks and who sometimes portrayed Buddha with the face of Apollo. Buddha was elevated to man-god status in purely human form as was done in the West. Buddha’s life-cycle and story shares similarities to the Greek man-gods (eg Heracles) of old.

Anywaves, perhaps too much analysis. Interblending produces the new. Though based on older concepts, Taro is still modern and most enjoyable as a film.

Thanks Brett. Nice choice. Thanks also to the generous Japan Foundation for providing the subtitled print.

Pia Santaklaus

Liquid Sky - this week at cinematheque

SAT. 1/11 @ 12:00 NOON & MON. 3/11 @ 6:30

LIQUID SKY

USA/1982/Colour/112mins/35mm/HP Dir: Slava Tsukerman.

Aliens are after the heroin-like substance produced by the human brain at the point of orgasm. Anne Carlisle, who co-wrote the screenplay, plays a dual role as a lesbian punk model and a male homosexual punk model. A subplot involves Otto von Wernherr, a government scientist investigating the UFO on Carlisle's roof. This offbeat film, directed by a Soviet-born filmmaker, captures New York City in the grip of the New Wave movement of the early 1980s.

“Recasts Weimar Germany - with its attendant androgyny, drugs, and general air of apocalypse - as a New York New Wave nightmare.” Gary Morris, Bright Lights Film Journal

November/December 2008 Program

Click to enlarge.

Aliens from Spaceship Earth - this week at cinematheque

6:30 MON. 27/10 ONLY

ALIENS FROM SPACESHIP EARTH

USA/1977/93mins/Colour/35mm/HP Dir: Don Como.

Using interviews and rare archival footage, this film documents the counterculture’s involvement with the new religious movements of the 1960s and 70s. The film speculates that yogis and gurus may be driven by aliens with a New Age agenda - the evolution of human consciousness. Featured in the film are Sai Baba, Ram Dass, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Father Yod, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, and many other spiritual leaders, as well as starry-eyed testimonials by Cybil Shepard, Martin Landau and Raymond Burr. Folk-rock singer Donovan narrates and provides the soundtrack.

“One of the only films of the era that intelligently and provocatively counteracts the schlock and mass media sensationalism that basically demonized a generation of seekers in the 70s.” Jodi Wille, Process Media

If you enjoyed Shangri-La and Amazing World of Ghosts at past screenings, you'll definitely groove on this far-out 70s schlock-doc.

That's Exploitainment by Pia Santaklaus

I much enjoyed the Cinematheque presentation you made today entitled THAT’S EXPLOITATION. Informative and well curated. You obviously did a lot of research and managed to collect a very interesting bunch of film snippets, sound bites, slides and other quirky and impressive memorabilia. The talk seemed quite extensive and I imagine after the 2 full hours allocated for the presentation you had to cut your talk short. It isn’t surprising, as this is a very big subject and 2 hours can barely do it justice; nevertheless, you managed to fit in a lot of good information, and you did it in a clear and ordered way. I would have loved to have seen and heard all the rest of the program you’d prepared but had to limit.

You credited film historian Eric Shaefer’s book BOLD! DARING! SHOCKING! TRUE! as the major resource for today’s presentation. I aim to see if I can get a copy of that book to find out more for myself.

Permit me to share a few of my own thoughts on the subject of exploitation films:

I imagine that during the 1930s, 40s & 50s the often-present, ever-growing industry of smaller film companies and initiatives who made these non-Hollywood pictures did satisfy a definite gap in the market. One might see the energetic makers of these so-called exploitation films as the rebellious, independent, misunderstood or misrepresented little brothers of the bigger brother we call Hollywood.

Their influence was felt not only by all society, but Hollywood also. Their drive and ability to make quick, profitable films would have been secretly admired by parts of the perhaps less resourceful Hollywood. Their ‘hijacking’ of cinemas, distribution routes, audiences and related structures would have irked the Hollywood machine which would have preferred to own a monopoly over the industry. In all, the so-called exploitation market took some customers and profits away from the Hollywood machine in what I see as a ‘David and Goliath’ struggle; the giant Hollywood could not successfully quash or regulate the effective smaller rebel element.

When one considers that much of history has been written by the ruling powers, one might get some idea as to how the smaller, so-called exploitation industry (that often challenged and ignored the Hollywood path), were labelled with such a derogatory moniker.

To say that the so-called exploitation films are any more exploitative than many Hollywood films through the years is simply wrong.

One cannot assume that an audience is any more exploited by the so-called exploitation films than the audience of bigger budget mainstream Hollywood films. The audience has a choice whether or not to see films from either camp and in fact often demand such entertainments.
One cannot assume that the cast and crew of the so-called exploitation films are more exploited than those of Hollywood films. Clearly the Hollywood machine has a history of chewing up and spitting out (exploiting) many, many directors, actors, actresses, technicians and other employees. The relative term ‘exploitation’ negates itself in this scenario. One cannot single out audiences or makers of either film camp as being any more or less exploited than the other.

If nothing else, the smaller size of the so-called exploitation film crews would ensure smaller overheads and more control, and in this way, they might produce a less exploitative, more guaranteed, truer, clearer, less-compromised individual vision; something many Hollywood heads, being beaten at their own game, may have envied and deeply resented. Almost certainly, parts of Hollywood would have felt exploited by the perhaps piratical element of the so-called exploitation mob.

It is most likely that Hollywood initiatives developed the slanderous phrase of ‘exploitation’ in order to lead a wave of negative energy against their competition, the so-called exploitation groups. This tactic however, does seem hypocritical, as the makers of the so-called exploitation films were in many ways only following in the steps of big brother Hollywood, but on a smaller, cheaper, scale. Both provided product that had an audience, both shepherded their audiences into cinemas and ultimately, at the end of the day, they both tried to make money, some more than others. Hollywood accusingly calling their little prodigal brothers ‘exploiters’ is a lot like the pot calling the kettle black, or the raven chiding blackness. The criticism is unfair as the term might just as easily apply to the accusers.

I would offer that the so-called “exploitation films” deserve a more appropriate relabelling; something more befitting and approachable to market them with. I suggest ‘exploration films’, ‘calculation films’, ‘resolution films’, ‘challenge films’, ‘feeler films’, ‘questy films’, ‘dodge films’, ‘grapple films’ or any other name more suitable for these enduring, influential pieces that have been so wrongly given the negatively suggestive name ‘exploitation’.

Brett, thanks again for the fine effort.

Pia Santaklaus

Maniac Bride Child by Pia Santaklaus

I’d like to offer a few of my thoughts on today’s double at Cinematheque, MANIAC (1934) and CHILD BRIDE (1938).

First MANIAC: With all its flaws, I still enjoyed this relatively slap-dash, generic, low-budget ‘horror’ film. This film experience would have had a lot more impact in its day particularly as psycho-therapy was still in its relative infancy and viewers probably hadn’t been saturated with this sort of horror film. It opened with some beautiful haunting music and some early-scientific theories on mental disease, interestingly distinguishing the mind from the brain, suggesting the mind being the brain’s operator.

One of the main characters, Dr Meirschultz (A Jewish-German name meaning ‘bright overseer’) worked in his lab wearing a white lab-coat, a kind of cliché mad-professor- cum-doctor. His ‘assistant’, Don Maxwell, was a vaudeville actor and impersonator who helped the doctor in a kind of ‘Igor’ capacity, though he looked more presentable than a cliché ‘Igor’. Maxwell would ultimately kill Dr Meirschultz and take over his likeness perfectly. Maxwell had this capacity to become a doppelganger. This doppelganger theme was probably taken from the Edgar Allan Poe story ‘William Wilson’ (1839) in which it features most heavily.

Shades of the Frankenstein story and motifs crept into MANIAC as Maxwell and the Doctor enter a morgue to snatch a dead body with the aim of reanimating it. During the morgue scenes we see short interspersed cuts of footage featuring a cat chasing a mouse (reflecting the real cat and mouse game they were playing), then we later see cat fighting with a cat, and later a dog fighting with a dog. Perhaps this prepares the viewer for the ‘cat fight’ which takes place in a subterranean vault even later in the movie between two real women struggling in their dog-eat-dog world.

So many Edgar Allan Poe references are scattered throughout this film that I would not baulk at suggesting that without the influence of Edgar Allan Poe, this movie could not have been made.
In one scene a woman actually mentions Poe and his story ‘Murder In The Rue Morgue’ (1841) which featured an orangutan. One scene in MANIAC finds a patient accidentally injected with adrenalin and turned into a beastly man resembling an angry wild orangutan or similar primate. In his hyper, ape-like state, the patient picks up a beautiful female and escapes with her in his arms (perhaps shades of KING KONG - 1933) to satisfy his primal urges. Again this ‘orang-utan’ scene references Poe, as Poe had employed the ape as a character in one of his stories.

Another scene in MANIAC, finds Maxwell ‘burying’ the Doctor behind a brick wall which is an obvious tip of the hat to Poe’s short story ‘The Cask Of Amontillado’ (1846).

Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ (1843) is also heavily referenced in MANIAC. In Poe’s story ‘Tell-Tale Heart’, the narrator has an imaginative mind which creates irrational fear that someone’s eye has a vulture-like gleam and imagines the gleam to be evil. In MANIAC, Maxwell sees a satanic gleam in various character’s eyes including Dr Meirschultz, female patients and even a cat that he fears enough to rip out it’s eye and swallow it to avoid the gleam.

On more than one occasion we see superimposed footage of ritualistic, satanic imagery, probably designed to represent the hidden evil that conspires to corrupt Maxwell. The dark side of his mind influences him in the wrong direction. This theme also might have its origins in a Poe story; in this case THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE (1845), the ‘Imp’ of course being a small inner demon that leads decent individuals to do the wrong thing and get in trouble.

On the subject of Poe, he also wrote a story called ‘The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether’ (published 1856) which dealt in part with the old torturous form of physical punishment that coincidentally featured in today’s second movie CHILD BRIDE (1938) in which the local female teacher closely escapes ‘tar and feathering’ by a vengeful mob of unsavoury men. I imagine the taunting insult “Chicken!” may have originated from this system of victimisation.

CHILD BRIDE starred a young actress Shirley Mill who adequately played the child bride ‘Jennie’. Some of her characteristics, including her demeanour and particularly her voice and the way she enunciated, seemed to very much mimic or respond to the style of the then upcoming popular young actress Shirley Temple.

In CHILD BRIDE we find a dwarf called ‘Angelo’ (angel) with a simpleton buddy called ‘Happy’. I wonder if the name ‘Happy’ was influenced by the animation SNOW WHITE (1937) in which one of the seven dwarves was called ‘Happy’.

I believe there is supposed to be an infamous skinny-dipping scene included in this film. Unless I fell asleep during the session, I did not see such a scene and so did not find the movie ultra-exploitative. The reality of child brides is indeed horrific, but this movie does go some way in exposing such issues. The young bride Jennie is admired and loved by a young boy called Freddie whose age is more appropriate to hers, and the movie ends on a ‘happy’ note with Jennie and Freddie together at last, though I’m not too sure the young, possessive Freddie will grow up to be a suitable enough husband for Jennie as he may have some anger-management issues which he revealed when we saw him intent on gunning down (murder?) the girl-bride’s evil and too-old husband.

A wonderful choice of films Brett. I thank you again, till next week.

Pia Santaklaus.

12th Japan Foundation Japanese Film Festival

The Japan Foundation have announced the line-up for the 12th Japanese Film Festival.

Here are the details.

Enjoy.