[The explanatory introduction to this series of posts is the first one.]
#11: The Transformers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QYQS9SYa6A
Okay, let’s get this out of the way first so I don’t have to deal with it in comments: The Transformers movies suck, Michael Bay sucks, Shia LeBeouf sucks, Megan Fox sucks, they betrayed the franchise, they’re all hacks, Michael Bay is a misogynist racist, you hate Shia LeBeouf in everything he’s in, he and Megan Fox are terrible actors, the humor in this movie is stupid and lowbrow, the sequels were insulting and god-awful, yadda yadda yadda…did I leave anything out? If so, feel free to NOT comment about it, because I care just about as much about all that as I do about there not being any actual irony in Alanis Morrisette’s music.
Having said that:
Who’s Kaiju is it? I think we finally found an easy one, but I would argue that again it’s a shared load. Sam Witwicky is typical suburban teenager with latency fantasies. He wants to break away from the mundane path of his life and do something great, like his ancestor, Archibald Witwicky, famous polar explorer. All he has left of his ancestor are a few dusty relics, long dead and devoid of any energy that might have ever been imprinted on them.
Except for one: a pair of glasses now serving as the reliquary of Archibald’s old Kaiju, Megatron.
The problem is also that Sam is a raging, boiling crucible of teenage-boy hormones, only adding to his frustrated, repressed, pent up energy. Sam Witwicky is /alive,/ by God, and he wants to /live./ Right now, his only hope of /living/ in this context is to get himself a car, a car that has been invested with all his hopes, his dreams, his wishes, his fears, and his angers, and so it comes to life as his Kaiju.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCzM8ZTFKtg
Enter then the second touchstone: Mikaela Banes. Her life has been one of disappointment and distrust, with even her parents, the ones she should trust most, being liars and criminals. She is angry, careful, and guarded, all aspects we should find familiar by now from the previous entries. Much like Elsa, she does not show her feelings easily, and much like Katara, the new Kaiju in her life (again ushered in by the figure of a man-child) promises a certain ammount of hope.
And again, there is another entity sharing this Kaiju: Captain Lennox.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTSiQ00gLiU
Captain Lennox is a good soldier, but he has a wife and a new baby daughter at home. Suddenly his world just got a lot bigger, and a lot smaller. Before this, his life was simple. He was the very model of a modern major general. he took orders like a pro, and protected his country from all threats, foreign and domestic. But now? He has a family, new priorities. New hopes, new fears, new anxieties.
But he’s still a soldier, and he still has to follow orders. He doesn’t have time for new emotions, and the army doesn’t really want him to have any new priorities. Previously, he didn’t care that his nation and his army had secrets. But now, what if those secrets threaten his men, and his family? So with all this lurking under the surface for him, his erption comes in the form of a sneak attack as the Decepticon called Blackout attacks his base, and sets loose the burrowing sand robot Scorponok.
How are they beaten? Again, Kaiju are very much metaphors for the depths of our unconscious minds set loose in a conscious world. When you face an unconscious power, sometimes you have to also tap into the Unconscious for power. The mistake is in believing that then /you/ wield /it/ and not the other way around. Sam was the first to figure that out. With a quick mind and nothing to lose, he took the leap to trust Bumblebee. Mikaela was more skeptical, but in the end, she trusted Sam. But Lennox and his men are soldiers. If there’s one thing they know how to do, it’s work with their allies, and for Lennox, the true Heroic choice was the one where he recognized that the autobots were allies, not weapons. Probably because of his radically altered point of view because of the birth of his daughter, he recognized a key truth: You cannot push a Kaiju. You cannot command them. You can only work with them.
But the Autobots in this case recognized the reciprocal: The unconscious mind sometimes needs the conscious mind to guide it, and when the two are in agreement, in harmony, they are unstoppably powerful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMo_Jx35SZw
Societal agreement: Machines represent the epitome of conscious control. They come from technology, which itself comes from science, which itself is the offspring of our greatest triumph: Consciousness. We don’t have to rely on the whims of our evolutionary instincts, like Sam constantly hunting for a mate or Lennox starting to doubt his superiors. We can know everything we need to know with certainty.
That sentiment should sound like the hubris of the 80’s I mentioned in #15.
But just like in the Ghostbusters, we know that’s not true. We know that there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy, and we fear the Universe reminding us of that. The key difference is this: In the Ghostbusters, the eruption happened from the deepest depths of our unconscious. In this movie, it happened through our machines, with our unconscious minds posing as our conscious minds in cheesy Groucho Marx glasses. In that way, they were able to lead our conscious minds back to the edge of the deep waters to talk.
And that scares us.
The Transformers movie (the first one, not the crappy sequels) was about both the good and bad side of returning to conversation with our unconscious minds, how it can be done well, and how it can be done badly.
The spark of the Divine: In this case represented directly and metaphorically by a mcguffin called “The Allspark,” /literally/ the spark of the divine. It’s what Sam was trying to find metaphorically and ineffectually in the freedom supposedly granted by a car, and the Campbellian sacred union of finding love (even if he didn’t know he as actually just looking for sex). It’s what Mikaela was looking for when she tried to be better than her parents, and better than herself. It’s what Lennox was looking for when he sensed something sinister under the surface and demanded to know the truth. It’s what Optimus Prime wanted, to restore balance and harmony, and it’s what Megatron wanted for its unlimited power.
In the end, it is that eternal wellspring of energy that we all seek, and only those who can work in harmony with the Universe, with the Unconscious, with the Kaiju, will ever truly taste it.
Genre note: You’ve probably guessed that there are going to be a variety of “types” of Kaiju that I’m going to review. I think I did a rough count one night and figured out that I think there are nine distinct types, but the concept is still nebulous in my head, so I’m certainly open to comment on this point. I also think there’s probably a lot of overlap between types. For now, I call them basic emotional giant, elder god, dragon, queen, guardian, bogeyman, construct, alternate form, and messenger. We’ve covered five so far: Elder god, queen, messenger, emotional giant, and guardian. The next one will be a dragon, and in his Genre notes, I’ll go into more detail about dragons in general.
So, Optimus Prime, what would you say to my audience tonight if you could?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWjpz0M-7_E
Holistic Unconscious: 