Synthetic Choronzon

They keep themselves from the kisses of my Mother Babylon, and in their lonely fortresses they pray to the false moon. And they bind themselves together with an oath and with a great curse.
...
Yet of their own poison do they perish, and in their lonely fortresses shall they be eaten up by Time that hath cheated them to serve him, and by that mighty devil Choronzon, their master, whose name is the Second Death..." -Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth (Egyptian Tarot)

The intention of this series of blog entries--which are hopefully evolving into more fleshed out and full length studies as comprehensive articles--is, in part, an exploration into the juncture of film studies, ‘esoterica’ and the national security state.

What follows is a brief shot sequence analysis of director James Cameron’s 1984 film: The Terminator.

‘The Last Day of Disco’ Sequence

The time code for the beginning of the sequence in question logs in at approximately 00:34:00 and ends at approximately 00:35:30. The shot is  probably more commonly recalled by fans of  The Terminator franchise as the ‘Tech-Noir’ sequence, which is also the name of the disco where the gun battle between the Terminator unit and future warrior ‘Reese’ takes place.

On the ‘Special Edition’ DVD, the particular chapter in question is rather derisively titled ‘The Last Day of Disco.’ ‘Tech-Noir’ may also be an allusion to the 1982 film Blade Runner--although within the context of Arnold Schwarzenegger firing an automatic weapon in all directions while a large and rather garish neon ‘Tech-Noir’
sign is incessantly flashing directly behind him, this possible attempt at homage to a then emergent genre-- ‘cyberpunk--’ is perhaps, at best, self-conscious 'kitsch--' or maybe a direct result of budgetary constraints.

click to 'enlarge'

The notion of ‘kitsch--’ though within an entirely different historical framework --will make itself quite evident later on in this exploration; specifically from the use of mise en scène (particularly the placement of people) for this important sequence.

The narrative context of the 'Tech-Noir' sequence is pivotal and decisive for the Terminator’s ‘search pattern’ mission in locating and ‘terminating’ Sarah Connor. After ‘terminating’ all the other women named Sarah Connor-- with the assistance of a telephone directory--the cybernetic organism has finally ‘zeroed’ in on the real target of his search and destroy mercenary mission: the real Sarah Connor; soon-to-be mother of John Connor, leader of a future human resistance in an apocalyptic and genocidal war against machine intelligence apparatuses.

At the beginning of the aforementioned time code (approximately 00:34:00) the spectator sees an eye-level camera angle at a medium, then full shot, and a basic pan as the Terminator slowly surveys the human contents of the ‘Tech Noir’ club, looking for his intended target. He is surrounded by disco dancers and the frame rate is ‘over cranked’ to further induce an oneric quality in an already chaotic and multi-chromatic cacophony typical to nightclub depravity.

The supreme interest for the purposes of this analysis, however, is the rather peculiar utilization of mise en scène  in the form of a young woman who may perhaps be mistaken for a 'disco version' member of the National Socialist Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend) German Girl’s League, dancing beside the Terminator at a critical juncture in his search and destroy mission. This character appears at the very moment the T-101 Cyberdyne Systems unit makes a positive identification of Sarah Connor and the possible message conveyed (though on a perhaps unconscious level) is that the appearance of what looks like a Hitlerjugend from the German Girl's League, circa late 1930's, has further empowered and strengthened Arnold Schwarzenegger in his quest to finally rid the earth of humans and replace them with superior cybernetic organisms.

Hitlerjugend from the
German Girl's League

Compare with disco dancer at 'Tech Noir' club, before the first attempted 'hit' by the Terminator on Sarah Connor.

Considering the film was released in 1984, a historically and literarily fateful year, such subliminal manipulation of spectator consciousness raises many questions regarding the intent of the film direction by James Cameron and the possible influence of  soon-to-be superstar and Hitler (as well as cigar) aficionado, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in the decision to utilize overtly National Socialist semiotics in the creation of this film.

The use of National Socialist imagery in this sequence brings to mind the late veteran BBC broadcaster Alistair Cooke's comments regarding the 'recall' victory of Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003. Here is an excerpt from one of his last Letter from America broadcasts, dated October 13, 2003:

Some thoughtful, if pessimistic, people see in the Schwarzenegger triumph a darker vision. He has admitted to his early admiration of Hitler, especially of Hitler's power to rouse a despairing, poverty-stricken people and lead them on to visionary heights. The thing he most admired about Hitler was the "Fuhrer princip" - the strong leader principle. Schwarzenegger wants to be that strong leader. So we must wait and see whether in the course of his governorship we shall see democracy invigorated or the emergence of the first American fuhrer.

Soon after his death from 'lung cancer' in 2004, Alistair Cooke's remains were needlessly defiled and stolen by body snatchers, who surgically removed his bones and replaced them with PVC piping. This was apparently a fairly large and profitable enterprise and the men involved may possibly have had gangland affiliations--selling bones and organs for considerable profit to transplant companies. The cancer Alistair Cooke was suffering from, however, made his bones unsuitable for any form of transplant therapy, thus making this ghoulish defilement even more bizarre and inexplicable.  

This 'scheme,' which involved thousands of corpses, including Cooke's, was rather oddly described by Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes as 'something out of a cheap horror movie.' Mr. Hynes final statement to the press in the news story referenced above was...'this was no bad movie. This was for real.'

This last quotation from the DA's office segues rather 'nicely' into the next installment of the Terminator franchise, T4. T4, as I have previously stated, is also possibly very 'real' and is very much currently 'in production.'

The pending release of Terminator 4 or T4 and the abbreviation for the film (T4)--including some of the initial concept poster art, rely heavily on and play off  of  conceptions that are already impregnated with the semiotics of a past and presently reemerging ideology of hatred, possession, occupation and control.

Peter Levenda most eloquently elaborates on a concept in Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (Book One: The Nine) which I have also independently referred to in the past, and my comment is worth repeating here again for the sake of clarification:

...the late investigative journalist Gary Webb once wrote that research into the spectral realms of covert operations and parapolitics (or deep politics) will, in many instances, never really yield the cut and dry empirical data as evidence required, for example, in a court of law. There is no judge or jury here; therefore, the subject of this particular investigation need not be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Such is the nature of this particular Beast. Unfortunately, many 'consumers' of what basically constitutes speculative inquiry do not understand this concept.

under reconstruction...

‘Not  Mom’  Sequence

The time code for this sequence begins at 1:16:14 and ends at approximately 1:16:58.

The ‘Not Mom’ sequence is composed of two scenes. The first scene begins with a medium close up of Sarah Connor sitting on the corner of a bed in a motel room where she and Reece have been using as a hide-out. She has just emerged from a bath, wearing only a white towel and proceeds to speak on a ‘yellow’ telephone to her ‘mother.’

Within the over all conceptual context of the film’s narrative, the color yellow is significant because it may  represent the yellow of the ‘star of David’ patch assigned to those deemed to be of Jewish ethnicity or religion by the National Socialist regime. (Similarly, in Taxi Driver Robert De Niro wears some form of  yellow 'military' patch with gorilla face on it reminiscent of  The Planet of the Apes on the sleeve of his army jacket.)  As mentioned previously, there exists a possible conscious and overt utilization of National Socialist semiotics and related historical references by director James Cameron and lead actor Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first Terminator installment. Along similar lines, it is interesting to note that in some quarters  a controversy exists as to whether identifying one as ‘Jewish’ can be a legitimate designation of racial or religious affiliation. The mainstream has accepted both racial and religious signifiers as valid. However, some ‘scholars,’ especially those who might be designated ‘radical right,’ reject the use of the term ‘Jewish’ as a valid racial signifier. This argument is a bit too complex to flesh out in detail currently; and if  it ultimately lacks merit, it still might serve as an interesting undercurrent for the purposes of this film, vis-à-vis its theme of a 'future' machine war against 'humans.'

The shot appears to utilize a ‘practical’ light source, probably a standard lamp or bedside night light. The rest of the hotel room is photographed in fairly low light, furthering cinematographer Adam Greenberg's  attempt at a ‘future-noir’ aesthetic. To paraphrase James Cameron in the ‘Special Features’ section of the DVD, most of the film was shot using low light or ‘low key’ lighting effects and the majority of the action takes place at night. As a brief side note: most of Greenberg's earlier work as director of photography was done in Israel, until his first major feature film in the United States-- Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One (1980).

With a bit of manipulative coaxing, Sarah Connor agrees to divulge the telephone number of the motel that she is using as a hide out to her ‘mother.' Again, within the narrative context, this scene immediately precedes a sex scene involving Connor and Reece in which the spectator is lead to believe signifies John Connor's moment of conception. With this telephone scene, a blurring of the lines of distinction has occurred between male, female, mother, father and the conception of the child: the Terminator has supplanted Connor’s real mother by imitating her voice immediately before Sarah Connor becomes an actual ‘future’ mother or ‘Mother of the Future,’  following the point of impregnation by Reece. The possible implication being that of a symbiotic relationship between Connor and Terminator: the cybernetic organism has given birth and ‘mothered’ Sarah Connor before her sex scene with Reece, which establishes her legacy in the Terminator mythos as ‘Mother of the Future.’ Additionally, an interesting parallel between National Socialism, Zionism, European Jewry and the formation of the state of Israel (including the subsequent history of the Middle East) can be drawn at this juncture as another overriding conceptual theme--however, explicit details in this regard will be fleshed out in a subsequent update. For the time being, the following summation of source material should serve as a sufficient departure point for the apparent historical symbiosis between National Socialism (Terminator) and Zionism/Jewry (Sarah Connor-'Con-Her'):

Zionist collaboration with fascism/Nazism in the 20th Century has been documented in extensive detail by such historians as Heinz Zollin Höhne in The Order of the Death's Head : The Story of Hitler's SS, Lenni Brenner in 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis (the quintessential work on this subject) , Zionism in the Age of Dictators (also by Brenner and available online in html format) Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem, Edwin Black's The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine, Francis R. Nicosia's The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, Rudolf Vrba and Alan Bestic's I Cannot Forgive, and Rafael Medoff's The Deadening Silence: American Jews and the Holocaust.

From Lenni Brenner's 51 Documents : Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis:

Zionist factions competed for the honor of allying to Hitler. By 1940-41, the "Stern Gang," among them Yitzhak Shamir, later Prime Minister of Israel, presented the Nazis with the "Fundamental Features of the Proposal of the National Military Organization in Palestine (Irgun Zvai Leumi) Concerning the Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe and the Participation of the NMO in the War on the Side of Germany."

The Zionist-Neoconservative-Bush Axis may perhaps be a tragically similar repeat of the events documented in the aforementioned texts.

A very brief overview of the Biblical Sarah of the Old Testament:

Where did she live? Ur of the Chaldeans; a wealthy, urban area of southern Mesopotamia (220 m. SE of Baghdad). Later, Haran, in Syria, and from the age of 65, in Canaan (GEN 12:4).

What was her name ? a) Her Name Was Sarai, "princely" (GEN 11-17:14) b) Her Name Was Sarah, "princess" (GEN 17:15-23:20) Sarah is a covenant name that was given to her by God (Gen 17:15,16)

GEN 17:15,16 "God also said to Abraham, 'As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.'"

1) How did Sarah fit into the Covenant?  a] as Abraham's wife she was included in his covenant with God b] as the one who would bear the child of promise she is included.

2) What is a covenant? a] the word "covenant" means: a binding agreement or  contract that supersedes any other relationship: a treaty, alliance of friendship, a pledge or agreement, a contract. i] this can be between two people or between God and man ii] this can be a conditional or unconditional  iii] this involves oaths/promises of commitment and blessings or curses for keeping or breaking the covenant; signs; sacrifices- the Hebrew word for making a covenant is "berith","to cut a covenant", (making a blood sacrifice as part of the ritual). b] covenants represent: i] pledges/promises upon pain of death ii] commitment unto death  identification with the covenant partner: he is you and you are him- his concerns are yours and yours his pledge of defense against the other's enemies- his enemies are yours and yours his pledge of making one's resources available to the other.

The telephone scene cuts to a very slow pan and tracking shot of yet another dark interior utilizing what again appears to be another ‘practical’ lighting source in the form of a flame generated from a fire place. The slow pan and tracking finally ends and the camera tilts upward to finally reveal the actual source of the 'voice' at the other end: Terminator.

The film's script describes the shot thusly:

The pan comes to a table.  Smashed plates.  Spilled coffee.
A spatter of blood.  A phone.  It follows the phone cord onto Terminator in close-up as he continues in a perfect simulation of her mother's voice...

Terminator (Mother's voice)
I love you too, sweetheart.

Although there is a considerable attempt made at ‘low-key’ and even somewhat ‘chiaroscuro’ lighting effects in this sequence and generally throughout the film, it is still a conventional Hollywood film; therefore lighting techniques that threaten to detract from ‘the demands of the narrative’ have been traditionally discouraged by the Hollywood studio system. As Susan Hayward writes in Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts:

The idea that cinema-going and watching must be safe, unchallenging and non-disruptive is a key ideological aspect of what we call the seamlessness of Hollywood and mainstream cinema.
(Hayward, 234)

Hayward further states that this notion of 'seamlessness' for the benefit of ‘realism’ is one of paradox and hypocrisy because this particular Hollywood construct—with all its technical formalities and technological manipulations—is presenting the spectator with a completely artificial and synthetic product: an artifice that, more-often-than-not, does not mimic ‘reality’ at all.

under reconstruction...

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