Thor: A Comic Book Versus A Religion

international | history and heritage | opinion/analysis Tuesday December 17, 2013 23:41 by Marvel Mischief

As with many cosmogonies Thor: The Dark World depicts not only the origin of its world but also within the context of perceptions and judgments of good and evil (or good guys against the bad guys). Within this good and evil paradigm of comic book drama we also find our “human” reality of the reality of war, such as various cultures attacking and killing each other from different worlds. Herein the Frost Giants of Jotunheim are attacking Deities of Asgard. Whereas in the Judeo-Christian Bible you could find Archangels creating a civil war, The Battle of Heaven, in which some angels, supposedly created by God, became turncoats against the almighty one. The important point for us to recognize is that even within so-called Realms-of-the-Divine, according the Judeo-Christian narrative and Norse mythology, there is again the common theme of “human” capacity for rebellion, civil disobedience and civil disturbance.

Thor: A Comic Book Versus A Religion

By Marvel Mischief

[Note: This is not a typical movie review. Run-of-mill reviews have already been written—most shallow somewhat like the film itself. Whereas this critique assumes you are familiar with the movie as story. Herein we will be challenged to see if this movie can relate to real social and political issues in our lifetime (as equally connected to the drama of current history and psychology).]

[Note: If you find this review important as a message feel free to post, share, tweet, email, discuss, debate, etc. It is important and necessary in today’s political reality for many people to distribute ideas—especially if controversial.]

Essay:

Most stories from Norse religion had Thor depicted as a redhead. He was not a blonde—even if early comic books got that basic detail wrong. And Thor, the thunder god, was primarily a warrior/ macho type—not some deep intellectual or charismatic leader (more like a Navy Seal). And yes trickster Loki bedeviled him more than once. You might imagine him to be some version of a Senator McCain blow-hard/ hothead today, maybe not as opportunist with wind-bag claims such as: “Obama’s shaking of Raul Castro’s hands at Nelson Mandela’s funeral was the equivalent of Chamberlain shaking Hitler’s”. (OK dumb ass if you say so.)

The Norse religion, of which Thor was one entity of a large Pantheon (women of those scattered white male cultures had some equality) was eventually conquered, like pretty much all Pagan peoples’ faiths of Europe by a later Roman Empire’s Christianity—that is made State Religion by the Emperor Constantine the Great (285-337 A.D.).

Roman Catholic emissaries sent into Viking communities, way up into the North, centuries later, used simple Christian messages of redemption and salvation to convert Norse people (who did not possess a written language and had little to no possibility of understanding many of the nuances of the New Testament let alone the Old Testament).

So then during Christian Crusades against Muslims this Catholic religion was ensconced in the mysterious Latin tongue (for many about up until Martin Luther’s time much later when the Bible was beginning to be translated into common colloquial languages). The foreign clergy controlled much thought about morality then.

So we can infer interpretation by the Viking peoples, or more correctly Northern (Norse) peoples, was left basically as an aftermath product produced in Iceland after being Christianized (see Snorri Sturluson of the 13th century as one of many talented Icelandic poets who wrote sagas). Only then did Scandinavian people began to learn a capacity to write language onto paper.

Prior that for about three or four hundred years of history (8th to 11th century) transpired and known as the Viking Age (as a kind of Diaspora of seafaring) that conquered a world extending from Greenland to the parts close to the Middle East, and it had great influence on subsequent European history and elsewhere (more so than what plenty sources typically suggest, that rather disparage the Vikings as mere murdering marauders and enemy berserkers). But yes they had an element of being black operations specialists like private contractor Blackwater Inc.

But still, as Northern Europeans were slowly being converted to Christianity (often enough against their will) they entered history (period of written works upon which to reflect back) as babes in the woods—quite naïve in plenty respects.

And as with many cosmogonies (cultural myths created to explain the origin of the world) the movie Thor: The Dark World depicts not only the origin of its world but also within the context of perceptions and judgments of good and evil (or good guys against the bad guys). Within this good and evil paradigm of comic book drama we also find our “human” reality of the reality of war, such as various cultures attacking and killing each other from different worlds. Herein the Frost Giants of Jotunheim are attacking Deities of Asgard.

Whereas in the Judeo-Christian Bible you could find Archangels creating a civil war, The Battle of Heaven, in which some angels, supposedly created by God, became turncoats against the almighty one. One story had Satan refusing to honor mankind (that he apparently thought too lowly) and so God cursed and condemned Satan and a war broke out. After this insurrection (the historical facts are quite obscure) Lucifer and his many minions were banished from Heaven and sent to Hell.

The important point for us to recognize is that even within so-called Realms-of-the-Divine, according the Judeo-Christian narrative and Norse mythology, there is again the common theme of “human” capacity for rebellion, civil disobedience and civil disturbance.

So, should we be surprised how human-like the dramas that make up part of what is often claimed as “supernatural” and “cosmic” events of Divine Orders, in which Gods and Deities seem to be so similar, psychologically and politically, to mankind’s workings? Or is it more a truth that while the masses are taught God made man in his image it is really that mankind makes up Gods in their own?

Or how do we rationalize government officials who refuse to honor the United States Constitution, and instead lie to the American people on a regular basis, while also violating citizen’s civil rights also on a regular basis—does this not have a smidgeon of hubris and arrogant pride of noncompliance to authority?

[Note: The U.S. Constitution is the Authority as our form of government—which is not a monarchy or plutocracy—nor a Theocracy. “Authority” here is via the “Authors” of the written Constitution and all legal law.]

Or how about lying in general, which is so routinely performed by many professionals at the national level, and yet is considered one of the major traits that defined the Devil? How is it heaven-originated stories are commonly like that of human politics here on planet earth in our temporal time (and through history as we know it)?

Equally what about throwing newly labeled enemy-combatants, as secretly flew to torture prison networks of a Dark World of archipelagoes? Is that not something right out of Judeo-Christianity with its own Hell of eternal torture with no possibility of a trial or release on parole? No terrorism or potential oppression with that state religion drama?

Loki was imprisoned as well by Odin in the movie but we did not witness torture. But then again such things are usually hid away from the public eye.

But obviously good versus evil is a universal truth to the human race (irrespective of which societies or specific deities worshipped or respected). But perhaps we should consider the status of how religions affect history’s and today’s reality as something more serious than a comic book and a gosh darn movie review?

Snide remarks by Loki aside, played by Oxford graduate Tom Hiddleston—whose hair is dark and long, having the specter of someone you’d find in a Gothic nightclub of mostly brunettes—(apparently not realizing ‘Goth’ as term historically originated in Sweden from Old Norse gotar) because modern industrial Goths seem to want to separate to a darker place compared to a stereotype of the pastel and shallow blonde one might see chirpily running around a fashion mall.

One reason why dark Loki is conceived as more sophisticated—as a soul willing to deceive (being ever so realpolitik like a Henry Kissinger or Nixon as both been labeled evil by more than a few), and Loki more prone to hatred, jealousy and revenge, and also willing to engage in violence and dirty tricks as power-hunger and paranoid. Loki is not nice like some stereotype with meme “Minnesota nice” (see Wikipedia) as if people elsewhere were real, down to earth, and never acted like cads.

Loki licks his wounds as if from the other side of the town’s railroad tracks—such as was stereotyped Italian Greasers against spoiled blondes of inevitable wealthier upbringing. Yet such stereotyping of shallow blonde has never hurt blonde women, who get far more opportunities for PR/ tip/ and employment in our so-called multi-racial respecting society (so politically correct mainstream media niceness makes sure black actors too get plenty opportunity to act in movies, commercials and TV shows.

But we are getting off track following a blonde bimbo, toy-boy (Chris Hemsworth) playing a rather muscular but vacuous role as reviewers are not sure how much he really falls in love with Jane (Natalie Portman)? Any woman named Jane has got like a Tarzan?

So why, with all the potential for some real insight into human and religion drama, from even potentially a comic book perspective, does this movie end up being in several respects so commonly mediocre, like a 4th of July fireworks you’ve scene dozens of boring times before? As one comment on the Internet says “Who comes up with this dribble?”

We could start with Benjamin Netanyahu’s comic book character holding up a cartoon picture of a bomb at a United Nations conference? This guy is clearly one of those epaulet-winged Archangels (no doubt a high-ranking seraphim) within an authoritarian and hierarchical structure (which is why the angels had rank in the first place), one who barks orders as if some Gabriel figure (because it is important to understand the Cosmic Comic book of Judeo-Christianity too rested on militaristic and an imperial mindsets (as we can tease both from its literature and some threads of an obscure story as: Why would angels rebel in heaven in the first place—that is if the Old Testament Got dude was so cool and righteous?).

In fact Netanyahu (maybe even the latest Messiah) who supposedly wrote Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat the International Terrorist Network could glory in the idea of Thor’s apparent neediness to require Loki’s clandestine mind, as Loki then delights to quip of Thor typical idiotic trials of smashing his fist and hammer through every conflict.

But now the mighty action figure Netanyahu is all pissed off about disobedience from the American Empire’s divergent propensities, and as he is now getting his legislative minions in cue-ball order to fight Obama’s deal with Iran, that is to beat-up on mere mortal man Obama.

But get this, when it comes to cosmic comic Marvel Wonder stories, such as great threats to a Universal Order, nothing beats Netanyahu’s and his diabolic order with the Neocon betrayal of the American form of governance. Yes indeed it was none other than Benjamin blowhard, in his aforementioned Fighting Terrorism (1995) that argued Americans need to curtail their freedoms here in the United States in order to fight terrorism (really referring to Israel’s enemies).

So it should not surprise you why the NSA records everything you do, and why there has been a sea-change in the nature of how the Government works, such as the notorious Patriot Act, and the extreme costs of the monolithic Department of Homeland Security (Joseph Lieberman’s baby) and why our legislative Intelligence Committees are run by people like Diane Feinstein. (Read item # 10 in the essay called: Ten Explosive U.S. Government Secrets About Israel by Grant Smith at www.irmep.org/ten.htm).

And when we consider that from the very minute 9/11 happened Israel’s leaders were telling us Americans who did it, and who in the international world are terrorists (which pretty much amounted to all Israel’s enemies) we can understand we have been under a massive propaganda campaign, that has ensued for decades here, in which Israel, its lobby, and its agents of influence, have made certain Americans would come to believe that any enemy of Israel was even more so an enemy of America (and furthermore all such enemies would be labeled terrorists by the fact that they are Israel’s enemies) meaning they were to be viewed as extremely evil agents that deserved no human consideration.

Read Netanyahu’s speech to the American Congress, September 20th, 2001, which can be found in the forward of his book Fighting Terrorism re-released in 2001). Also note throughout that book, such as on page 5, as he argues: “…requiring a reassessment of the legal instruments necessary for combating homegrown terrorism, alongside the means to monitor added powers given to the government to pursue these ends…” (in another words forget civil rights such as to privacy).

Regardless some people have questioned the official set of falsehoods, known as the Kean/ Hamilton 9/11 Commission Report, or those who call attention to the Bin Laden family presence in, and flights out, of the country right after 9/11 (suggesting Saudi Arabia was behind it) often fail to equally bring attention to the fact that it was Israelis, as spy-ring who were arrested and picked up shortly after the Twin Tower crashes, such as Mossad agents dancing on a van across the river after they were filming both airplanes crashing (meaning they knew ahead of time exactly when and where it was about to take place and were well positioned to make footage). Google “dancing Israelis 9/11”.

More importantly, right after 9/11, White House objectives, as NeoCon infested, would set off a plan to basically attack Israel’s major enemies starting with Iraq, as it was primarily the Neocons, AIPAC, and right-wing Israel that lobbied and manipulated the United States into an illegal war with Iraq (that included all the lies as to why) meaning they are responsible for the millions of deaths, the thousands tortured, the millions homeless, and all the infrastructure destroyed, suffering, etc., and the massive fraud to American taxpayer debt and deceit.

Is this not Holy Writ drama on a large scale worthy of any chapter of religious and spiritual nature—let a lone a comic book? Is this not good versus evil and threats to the major order of things? No wonder the war at Asgard in Thor: the Dark World extended to London, England, land in which some of our Constitutional rights fermented. There the massive military armaments crashed on a grandiose scale.

Yes there is a Clash of Civilizations going on as Samuel Huntington called it in his book and it is not limited to a town in New Mexico—it is a clash between a right-wing pretend Democracy in Israel aligned with Neocons and Leo Straussians against trying to save Americans civil liberties. (See Weapons of Mass Deception: the uses of propaganda in Bush’s war on Iraq (2003) by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber.)

Today they, Netanyahu, AIPAC, and the Neocons are again using their own form of monolithic legislative coercion against our own elected citizens to abort any possibility of a United States peaceful understanding with Iran.

How can Benjamin Netanyahu claim Iran is a terrorist state when both Israel and the United States supported the terrorist despot Shah Pahlavi for decades in that country while his police state carried out numerous atrocities?

How can Netanyahu come to our homeland and claim the United States and Israel are countries that support Democracy when they don’t do such a thing? Both countries are constantly manipulating the elections of other countries, just as they have done in Egypt in the past, supporting dictators like Mubarak. This is the kind of constant deceit and conceit the Israel right-wing plays to us, the American people—assuming, I guess, itself to be some trickster Loki getting over on a dumber and less sophisticated Thor-like people.

Maybe indiscriminant drone bombings are viewed as terrorism to some peoples? Maybe napalm bombing/ burning seemed terrorism to tens or hundreds of thousands of people in Korea or Vietnam? Hey (Mr. McCain where you been on closing Guantanamo—if you are such a tough and principled man?) Maybe threatening war or bombing countries into the Stone Age is terrorism?

Benjamin Netanyahu is one deluded person if he thinks he can constantly pull the wool over everyone’s eyes with his C-grade propaganda campaigns about how sacrosanct and specially exceptional is the Israeli/ American special relationship and agenda, that is how great are partners in crime.

Who is it to say what is and what is not terrorism when any threat can be experienced as terror to some soul? Civilians are being killed all the time. We are not so stupid a people we can’t read beyond comic book levels of human reality.

Thus we pause and pray there is really some Cosmic Soul Power out there that does a better job of dealing with issues of ethics than what we have been fed over the centuries from Middle Eastern Abrahamic religions.

Thor: The Dark World portrayed little that was authentically Nordic or Viking culture as close to history—save a scene of a burial of a Viking queen on a Viking ship burned at sea. Rather it, like so many American-like movies it is nothing but an overly-sensationalized special effects orgy, as scene of gussied-up and prettified violence, upon violence, upon inane violence, upon shrapnel violence, ad nausea, until the bulimia nervosa is all over your face and lap—much in tune to the conditioning of early Roman vulgarii who were served with “bread grains and circus”—that is grain and gladiatorial gore and blood or chariot race to get them unconsciously used to the idea of violence and mass murder and be distracted to think about what politicians were up to.

But now the American/ Zionist Empire has a toned down version of this incessant drone of drone bombings prettied up as aesthetic cosmic jets and aerial bombardments in space age grandiosity. (At least the ancient Romans citizens witnessed real blood and gore—not like the shiny polish of special effects that amount to a kind of numbing stupidity (concomitant with an excess of symphonic music for schmaltzy patriotic effect) which basically represents yet another kill-distancing, psychologically, as to not really appreciate what bomb explosions do to those who actually are its victims on the ground.)

Evil may indeed be shallow.

Many movies or of this Hollywood trough of gluttonous special effects, with so little intellectual justification. Thor too is but another sheep/ sheeple movie, which apparently assumes the West is too naïve to realize the Middle Eastern Lion is not going to peacefully sit aside the lamb of Jesus (who could not save himself from the torture of his own times).

The realm of the Vikings had a great deal of wilderness and trees and such, and little to do with elaborately constructed palaces one would expect at bankster meet-ups. Thor had a mere small chariot drawn by some goats venturing through a very lonely and tumultuous sky not saturated by satellites and airplanes. It was not a world of star wars and spangles.

Anthony Hopkins can play a profound figure, such as being Odin (the high Got) but there was little in character development, such as to why he has one working eye? Granted comic books are not novels but maybe comic book writers and screenplay producers could answer the question: “How does this art really enrich me as a human being?” “How am I a more informed and deeper person from this art that helps inspire me to be more humane?” At least comic books should occasionally by comedic and get you to laugh?

And why isn’t Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale, not in a comic book? Why isn’t Moses of comic book stature? Why is it when it comes to the Judeo-Christian tradition everything is supposedly considered too sacred to question or laugh or take liberties?

We have a slew of people who think they must protect the integrity of those ancient myths and their implications, even at the expense of endless war and bloodshed and lies and deceit (and showing too often many Americans and Israelis both don’t give a damn about other peoples’ suffering even when cruel and evil).

It is time to asking for deliberations of separating Church and State all throughout the Middle East. If the United States had a real State Department that would be our sane policy.

Instead we stay stuck believing the movie industry can’t come up with anything half way intellectual, or half brain-worthy, as we are forever subject to barbarian ruffians—assumed as far for inferior illiterates.

But then there is unending servings-up of Yahoo News queen Miley Cyrus, famous for giving a blowjob to a Thorian like mallet, that is with her jerky-twerky ergonomics, or more precisely her fellatio porn hitting the big screen (while we are invited to feel nostalgia for Britney Spears’ losing status and klieg light). But then female exhibitionists were always perfectly fine in this culture of double standards (no Hel for Valkyrie berserkers).