Resident Evil: Retribution (2012) – Jay’s Analysis

The Eye of the Umbrella Corporation is watching you!

By: Jay

I confess, I’m a bit surprised I haven’t found a real analysis of Resident Evil in the “conspiracy” realm.  There are a few videos on youtube, but the quality is so poor, there’s no point in mentioning them.  I am sure many of my friends and compatriots will sneer and giggle at a Resident Evil analysis, inasmuch as I am basically the only one who sees any value in the series.

In fact, not so much because the storyline is that great (it’s pretty cookie-cutter, since it is a video game film), but from a “conspiracy” vantage point, the symbols and messages in the series are exceptionally relevant.  The “conspiracy” view is hot stuff nowadays, and pop culture is rife with “Illuminati” references everywhere.  Resident Evil, however, is deeper than one might expect, and worthy of analysis, if anything because it has become a billion dollar plus franchise.  In particular, I’m going to focus on the latest installment, Resident Evil: Retribution.

The overall plot, for those who aren’t aware, focuses on Alice (Milla Jovovich), the former head of security for the Umbrella Corporation, the omnipotent, omnipresent shady conglomerate that focuses on genetic engineering, bio-tech, bio-warfare, cloning and virology in its endless underground cities and facilities.  Alice eventually discovers she is herself a crucial Umbrella experiment, being imprinted with an entirely false past with false memories and genetically engineered abilities that have resulted from the famed T-Virus, which originally caused the zombie apocalypse.  Alice is constantly being cloned and tested on, with endless Millas piling up like hot sexy garbage.  Alice wants answers and revenge, and embarks on a never ending mission to stop Umbrella and save what is left of the human race following the ravages of the now global zombie apocalypse.

In the first few installments, Alice escapes from the Umbrella facilities that are run by an A.I. supercomputer known as “Red Queen.”   At first, communist ideology comes to mind with the red queen (since feminism is a Communist movement), and given the imagery and symbolism of the new film, it would not be far off.  Communist/Soviet imagery and symbolism dominates the new film, making it even more “Illuminist” than I would have ever expected.  The Cold War is referenced and made use of symbolically throughout the film, with resurrected undead Soviet zombies being used in the underground simulation cities.  (The Red Queen is also the queen in Alice in Wonderland.)

The Zombie Apocalypse is coming. Only hot chicks will survive.

As it turns out, Alice only thinks she is in Tokyo, Berlin, Moscow, etc.  In actual fact, the cities are recreated simulations in a completely controlled and surveilled Umbrella underground base.  In fact, underground cities and bases are very real, being mentioned all the way back in James Bamford’s classic The Puzzle Palace in 1982.  A.I. Supercomputers like the “Red Queen” also exist, as Bamford has written of, as well.  Bamford wrote in that work:

Read more of this post

The Master (2012) – Jay’s Analysis

The fractured, kaleidoscope poster portrays the fractured, disassociative nature of Freddie Quell’s psyche.

By: Jay

P.T. Anderson’s The Master is great, primarily as an artistic presentation of a very dark subject: the manipulation of mind control.  Not mind control in the mass psyche which this blog focuses on generally, but in the localized cult setting.  Loosely based on L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, The Master  is an in-depth display of the tactics and techniques of manipulation, brainwashing and mind control, as the Hubbard-esque Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) plays the puppet strings with the fledgling cult.  Dodd’s focus in the story is the base vagrant Freddie Quell, who stumbles upon a yacht rented by Dodd and finds temporary work.   Interestingly, Hubbard himself possessed a similar yacht for a time, particularly during the heyday of his mountebank activities.

While most people have a vague idea of Scientology, most are unaware of Hubbard’s occult activities prior to creating Scientology.  Hubbard was involved in Crowleyanism for several years and “graduated” from his period of occult tutelage.  In effect, this meant that Hubbard had mastered the tools of manipulation and human psychology.   Hoffman plays Dodd brilliantly as a charismatic con-man (essential for any cult leader).  In this regard, what is lucidly portrayed are actual mind control techniques used by cults.

Principally, Dodd uses repetition of vague phrases, reaching into Quell’s subconscious to find the weaknesses in his psyche, as well as traumatic incidents involving war experiences, an absent father and sexual sins.  After bringing up these traumatic incidents, Dodd quickly elicits warm-fuzzies by appealing to Quell’s most pleasurable memories surrounding a youthful flame.  As the manipulation progresses, Quell is subject to a back and forth process of acceptance and rejection, where the individual is given a proxy family (the cult), and then fears exclusion and exile.   A pattern emerges, and the individual’s will is subject to mandated meaningless, repetitious actions (often under sensory deprivation), with the goal of disorienting the psyche, and attaching it to the welcoming father and mother archetypes (Dodd and his wife, played by Amy Adams).  Quell’s conditioning, termed in the film “processing,” is eerily reminiscent of trauma-based mind control.  In fact, the film is really about Dodd learning to become a charismatic, slimy master of human manipulation. Read more of this post

Olympics Opening with Queen and 007 Semiotics

Olympics Opening Ceremony: James Bond and the Queen Meet, Parachute Into the Stadium (Video)

 

Precisely what I was writing my thesis on. See these articles:

The Semiotics of Bond: Ian Fleming’s Use of Propaganda

Quantum of Solace: 007′s Alchemy

Casino Royale Novel Analysis

Golden Eye – Esoteric Analysis

Interview with Former MI5, Annie Machon

Psychological Warfare and Media

Jay’s Analysis Interviews in One Place

Rand Paul and Alex Jones

Jay’s Analysis Interviews:

Kentucky Republican Senator, Rand Paul

New York Times’ Best Seller and author of Crossfire, the basis for Oliver Stone’s JFK (and co-screenwriter), Jim Marrs

My appearance on the Alex Jones show discussing predictive programming in pop culture, and an earlier call-in

Former Mi5 Spymaster and Whistleblower, Annie Machon

Two-decade intelligence veteran and CIA-trained black ops expert, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer

Award-winning Reuters’ federal reserve correspondent, Pedro da Costa

Groundbreaking researchers and authors, Phillip and Paul Collins of ConspiracyArchive.com

Secrets of Prometheus Revealed

Skynet is Real: Alchemists, Exemplarism and Techgnosis (Update)

The sphinx which appeared in Wells' Time Machine. The sphinx is the cherub who guards and controls space and time.

By: Jay

UPDATE Below!

———————————————————————

At the end of H.G. Wells’ Outlines of History, he speaks about the “rise of the machines” and their ability to allay the toils of men, granting them more leisure for scientific products, art, and other harmonious progressive pursuits.  Education will become universal, and a better world will ensue.  Wells was, to be fair, spot on with many of his sci-fi predictions.  One can’t but notice that this article confirms his claims from The Time Machine concerning the devolution into “stunted pig-goblin creatures” to quote Alex Jones, likened to the Morlocks, while the elites will become like the Eloi.

However, the rise of the machines has been wilder than even Wells could have imagined, and will probably not be the universal utopia Outlines imagines, but something closer to the dystopia of The Time Machine.  In fact, we have reached the point where A.I. is nearing the ability of what we see in many science fiction films and novels, yet I agree with the affirmation of Douglas Hofstadter in Godel, Escher, Bach that we will not achieve self-awareness.   Even if this did occur, there is no certain test to determine the existence of “self-awareness,” and the modern scientists who argue to no end against the soul or mind must also take their dogma of the inability to “prove consciousness” and apply it to the golem.  On their basis, you could no more prove one than the other.   So the reductionists who think consciousness is merely matter have no problem identifying humans as “more complex” computers (like Daniel Dennett).  Nevermind that they are all guilty of the naturalistic fallacy.

In effect, this is a Prometheus situation, and is precisely the goal the occultists, alchemists and “scientists” have sought for millennia.  Don’t be fooled by the propaganda of the “new atheists” and sciencey labcoaters: the real secret is that the mysteries are real.  Granted, many of the “Illuminists” are of an atheistic and rationalist bent (and the actual Illuminati were Enlightenment rationalists), but there is a definite esotericism behind the creation of the golem.  Atheism itself can become a form superstition, as I’ve written many times on this blog.  I want to make clear, though, that I’m not anti-technology, nor am I saying I disagree with these goals.  Clearly the Enlightenment thinkers were right–in fact, some of them are central to the mathematics behind all this, as well as to religion and metaphysics and esoterism, such as Leibniz.  Newton, too, was an esotericist, and other examples can be given such as Nikola Tesla and Wolfgang Pauli. Read more of this post

Plato, Aristotle, Egypt and the Structure of Reality

Plato Vs. Aristotle

Aristotle, Plato, Egypt and the Structure of Reality

Immanuel Kant wrote at the close of his Critique of Pure Reason as follows:

In respect of the origin of the modes of ‘knowledge through pure reason’, the question is as to whether they are derived from experience, or whether in independence of ex-experience they have their origin in reason. Aristotle may be regarded as the chief of the empiricists, and Plato as the chief of the noologists. Locke, who in modern times followed Aristotle, and Leibniz, who followed Plato (although in con-considerable disagreement with his mystical system), have not been able to bring this conflict to any definitive conclusion. However we may regard Epicurus, he was at least much more consistent in this sensual system than Aristotle and Locke, inasmuch as he never sought to pass by inference beyond the limits of experience.1

In that paragraph Kant summed up the history of the division of philosophy into two camps with rival focii: the empirical tradition, descending loosely from Aristotle, emphasizing the immediate present, and the Platonic “noology,” stressing the permanence and eternality of the transcendent beyond, mirrored in the mind itself, which reflects the world’s own inherent, ideal structure.

However, which of these two thinkers, if either, is more correct? Is it possible to posit an external, essential structure to the world that supersedes the immediate, empirical experience?  How would such a realm be demonstrated?  The nature of these questions certainly extends beyond the scope of this paper, yet what I will claim is that Plato was more correct that Aristotle.  In fact, though Aristotle’s pioneering work in ethics, logic, politics and aesthetics cannot be overlooked, some of Aristotle’s own insights actually work to make the case for the claims of Plato, as I will argue.  This becomes particularly apparent when one considers the question of the infinity of God and numbers, which Plato and the Pythagoreans appear to have inherited from Egyptian Memphite and Hermetic traditions.  Interestingly, modern mathematical theorists and quantum physicists are coming to the very same conclusions the ancient Egyptians posited: that reality is, at base, much more than is visibly present, including higher and lower dimensions, as well as possibly a base, inherent mathematical essentialism behind the world we experience.  In effect, this means Aristotle’s empirical left turn from the Platonic Academy was in error.

Aristotle’s empiricism becomes most problematic when dealing with mathematical entities.  Aristotle argues against mathematical objects having a separate existence as Plato claimed, as follows: Read more of this post

Bibliography Recommendations for Bond Master’s Thesis

The First Bond Film, Dr. No

Since many readers of this blog are highly fluent in this area, any recommendations that are missing that are relevant are welcomed (aside from Fleming’s Bond novels themselves).  My thesis is on Fleming, Bond and the relation between semiotics and propaganda in espionage fiction and film. -Jay

Most Relevant Books:

 

The Politics of James Bond: From Fleming’s Novels to the Big Screen  by: Jeremy Black

 

For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond by: Ben MacIntyre

 

The Bond Code: The Dark World of Ian Fleming and James Bond by: Philip Gardiner

 

Ian Fleming and James Bond: The Cultural Politics of 007 Ed.: Edward Comentale

 

James Bond and Philosophy Eds. South and Held Read more of this post

The Magus (Novel) – Analysis

The Baphomet image is shown.

By: Jay

The Magus by John Fowles is a peculiar novel. It is not like anything I’d read previously – a kind of mix between the TV show Lost and the Michael Douglass movie, The Game, with a bit of Eyes Wide Shut thrown in for good measure: Imagine Aristotle Onassis with a penchant for psychological warfare.  Its protagonist is a young Oxford graduate named Nicholas Urfe who, having become bored of philandering and partying, undergoes an existential crisis and embarks for a teaching position on the Greek island of Phraxos.  Before leaving England, however, Nicholas breaks the heart of a beautiful Australian girl named Alison, as he quickly adopts an atheistic, nihilist worldview.

As he arrives, he finds that the island is not exactly what it appears to be. Nicholas wanders into the company of a wealthy Greek billionaire Named Maurice Conchis who seems to toy with Nicholas at every turn, befriending him, yet in a distant, disingenuous way.  Nicholas begins to experience strange events that even make him question his own anti-supernatual presuppositions.  He sees what he thinks are Greek gods, as well as playlets that seem to match up to the Marquis de Sade.  Nicholas realizes that these masques become increasingly real, encompassing his entire existence on the island.  Eventually, having partaken of a hallucinogenic drug, and falling in love with one of a pair of twins that appears to be in the employ of Maurice, Nicholas experiences another kind of breakdown, resulting in an initiation of sorts similar to the process one sees in Eyes Wide Shut, as I argued.

The novel is thus not a story of mere intrigue, but of induction into the mysteries.  However, this novel presents the mysteries in a different fashion.  In Fowles’ mind, the initiation is not one wherein Nicholas’ world status changes, adjoining him to the elite, but rather operates as a kind of grand “fuck you,” where Nicholas is forced to come to grips with the fact that there is an entire strata of individuals for whom generations of enormous wealth has occasioned a godlike status on earth.  As such, in Flowles’ construal, the world becomes a kind of grand, global masque and stage.  In fact, the novel is quite explicit that the controllers are the Illuminati.     Read more of this post

Quantum of Solace – 007′s Alchemy

Animus and anima in "harmony"

Animus and anima in “harmony”

“Everything I write has precedent in truth.” -Ian Flemming

By: Jay

Upon first viewing, I was not initially impressed with Quantum of Solace.  I took it as a mediocre Bond film with scant hints of deeper meanings and clues.  Recently, I watched it again and it changed my mind.  Not only is it chock full of subtle hints and clues, it actually appears to display a kind of alchemical process.  While that might sound far-fetched, allow me to prove my thesis. First, take into account the fact that Ian Flemming would very much have been enamored with just such an idea, given the occultic-secret milieu he inhabited.  In fact, Flemming had direct associations with Aleister Crowley, and based some of his characters such as LeChiffre on him.  Times Online writer Ben Macintyre explains in his review of a Flemming biography:

“Fleming’s villains, like his heroes, are patchworks of different people, names  and traits. Le Chiffre, the Benzedrine-sniffing villain of Casino Royale,  is believed to be based on Aleister Crowley, who gained notoriety in  inter-war Britain as “the Wickedest Man in the World”. Crowley was a  bisexual, sado-masochistic drug addict. A master of Thelemic mysticism (“Do  what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”), he specialised in  mountaineering, interpreting the Ouija board, orgies and thrashing his  lovers. The press simultaneously adored and hated him. Crowley made Le  Chiffre seem positively sane.”

Crowley also was an asset for a time for British intelligence.  Thus we see that alchemy coming into play shouldn’t seem strange.  In fact, the original 007, Dr. John Dee, was Queen Elizabth’s “seer” and was himself an alchemist.  As Flemming is known to have said: “Everything I write has precedent in truth.”  As with all Bond films, there is the famous artsy intro, and often they too are a clue to the kind of esoterism we can expect to see in the film.  This one begins with sand and silhouettes, ending with an eye and a “swastika” formation.  While you might be incredulous at first, hang with me, as swastikas pop up several times in this film, and for a reason.  Towards the end we see the leggy swastika morph into an eye (which will be relevant later on).

Leggy swastikas!

Both eyes and swastikas are prevalent in this film, as well as alchemy, so let’s analyze.   As with most modern films, Carl Jung’s archetypes and gnostic proclivities come to the fore.  Originally, the swastika symbol dates back to the most ancient cultures such as India and Mesopotamia as a “sun wheel,” of the so-called Bronze Age, with possibly some relevance to solstices and equinoxes.  Carl Jung had a lifelong fascination with the symbol, and gave it some possible association as an archetypal symbol in the collective unconscious.  So we begin with four women at the four cardinal points, which bring to mind the four elements, as well as images of sand or earth:  all of which pertain to alchemy.  Alchemy is the classical and medieval “art” of transformation, and the end goal of the alchemists was the “Great Work,” whereby all things are brought to perfection and harmony (or solace), under the provident gaze of the “all seeing eye.”  The “eye,” brings to mind the perennial symbology of secret societies as well as intelligence agencies and groups, such as MI5/6 and DARPA, who sit atop our panopticon surveillance society. Read more of this post

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