"UNGAZILIBALI (Don't Forget Yourself)" is a beautiful, poetic paean about hope, healing and unity at a time when such a message is needed most. In response to women throughout the country suffering from abuse, this single is a majestic, soulful song that has brought together five very talented artists, like fingers, to make a fist for the women facing oppression and violence in South Africa and anywhere else where positive spirituality is needed against political oppression. While traditional records labels can choke out some promising musical genius, digital distributors like Platoon are helping to get female creators the attention they've earned and help worthy causes while doing so.
In honor of Women's Month in South Africa the five most popular musicians in the country combined their energies and unique talents to bring up the hopes of women with an appropriate anthem. Ami Faku, Bonga Kwana, Msaki, Zolani Mahola and Eryn Allen Kane are all elements in a synthesis from across the planet that certainly captivates. "The magic happens when there is no agenda and you're not trying to force anything...you're just trying to make magic...and I think that is happening. The world should hear it," says Platoon's Co-Founder and CEO, Denzyl Feigelson, about the collaborative effort.
Platoon, a music company straight out of London, UK (as well as Cape Town, South Africa), has provided independent, unsigned, alternative artists like the ladies responsible for "UNGAZILIBALI" with a chance to reach out to listeners without going through a stifling official corporate record monolith. They not only have mighty musical mavens like Mr. Eazi, Maleek Berry, and Raleigh Ritchie, Platoon is also sponsoring artists that have gone onto major labels like Billie Eilish and Stefflon Don. "All these amazing artists who make records that aren't of interest to labels would be able to find an audience directly," says Feigelson. "We believe that artists do their best work when they have creative and economic freedom."
For the women who created the single, the project wasn't just business, it was personal."It's really special because this is something you can only accomplish when there are five women in the room. It's a very unique way to write," said Msaki, who is also a composer and producer. Singer Ami Faku added, "This is for my future daughter to tell her that I believe in her and trust her, and that she shouldn't be putting my fears or experiences upon her own life." Zolani Mahola, a singer that brings her own unique empathy as well as energy to the work, adds "This world is deeply in need of our particular energy and our particular voice."
Bonga Kwana (aka Nokubonga Kwana), a self-taught poet, singer and songwriter, reminds listeners of the song's motivational message: "People should take care of themselves." Eryn Allen Kane, a musician from Detroit, Michigan who has collaborated with Prince, definitely knows how to work with the best and heal hearts at the same time. "We're all bound by certain things, but music was the thing that completely freed me," she says. "We have a special mission here on earth as any creative, especially as a female...and there are waves that we are tapped into that we are only beginning to scratch the surface of...this world is very deeply in need of our particular energy and particular voice," says Zolani Mahola.
The single is a combination of English and Xhosa, a language native to South Africa. If you had a bad day and got mood poisoning, this is just what the ugqirha ordered. As deep and powerful as the sea, the song propels you like a whispering tide to a paradise with words. The five sing together, voices flying away, drifting back, spellbinding you with traditional rhythms and old, old, old skool beats. Each artist has a place in this single where they shine out, and when their voices soar together in unison, you can only feel good again.
What's next for these fine female musicians? Although each artist is occupied with their own successful careers, any successful collaboration like the single "UNGAZILIBALI" could potentially create an opportunity for more magic. Platoon has the platform for it, and Denzyl Feigelson knows how to deliver a hit that raises awareness at a time when women like Ami Faku, Bonga Kwana, Msaki, Zolani Mahola and Eryn Allen Kane around world need sincere support the most.
Although I was born on a nuclear Air Force base in Michigan, most of my life has been spent in the Inland Empire. Between growing up punk there to eventually working as a law clerk and then finally as a process server for the San Bernardino County legal court system, as a veteran of the landscape my opinion is that the I.E. is best described as a massive, dusty yin-yang.
The yang being the wealthy parts of the place that make money juxtaposed by the rather horrific, yin regions that end up making criminal statistics swell. It's the 14th most dangerous city in America, and dozens of people die there every year. I tell my friends the worst parts of the I.E. are basically Mad Max, Beyond Thunderdome...but there ain't no Thunderdome.
I still miss you, Spanky's!
Inland Empire Weekly called me one merry October and requested that I write a whole lot of words about horror films made in the I.E. "Sure." I said. "But it's going to cost you so much money you won't even be able to keep your website going by 2019." They laughed at my weird prediction and basically left me to my own devices until I hit the deadline weeks later. Vita brevi, ars longa!
While Halloween occurs only once a
year, horror films are something we can celebrate every season…as
long as we don’t die before the arrival of that next blockbuster.
An oozing chunk of the gruesome delight in watching all of that
screaming on celluloid is the thrill of witnessing your own town host
all of that terror…if you dwell within a place Hollywood finds
fearsome.
The scary news is, when it comes to
terror Los Angeles gets more film than the thriving metropolis known
from here to hell as the Inland Empire. Maybe it’s because of the
cancerous smog, the deadly traffic, or just the constant, eerie
Kafkaesque dread of being face-to-visage with LAPD.
Occasionally though, all of the omens
line up and some lost, mad soul does decide to shoot something
sinister amidst the haunted hills and dusty domiciles of the Inland
Empire, where even the blandly bright suburbs have gutters that can
stream scarlet, thanks to monsters, malefactors, or everyday murder.
Invaders from Mars, Palomar
Observatory, San Diego County
Invaders from Mars, made in 1953
and directed by William Cameron Menzies, is a cosmic sci-fi thriller
that is radioactive with paranoia since it was made at the height of
the Cold War. Decades ago every adult knew that if WWIII happened it
would be nothing but nukes from Rhode Island to Russia, and until
then every American citizen was a secret communist spy, sent from the
USSR to infiltrate and destroy.
In this silver screen screamer, evil
Martians invade a small town and start to mind control the populace,
brainwashing their leaders into cold, sadistic drones trying to
enslave humanity for their monstrous green masters. Before they
succeed the good guys find out, the bad guys get taken out, but the
space age menace remained, spawning numerous 50’s flicks that
promised moviegoers everything in the universe couldn’t wait to
journey across the cosmos to slay us all.
Palomar Observatory is a part of San
Diego worth stitching on to any piece of cinematic excellence. Before
the place was hit by Invaders from Mars film noir got there
first in the form of 1947’s Nightmare Alley, a brutal story
about one man’s sadistic greed and the mayhem he leaves in his
wake. Not exactly a cauldron of gore, through.
In 1977 this beautiful section of San
Diego County ended up on the big screen again, thanks to 1977’s
Crater Lake Monster, a tale about a dinosaur that wakes up
from suspended animation and tries to destroy and devour a city. The
legendary David Allen supplied the claymation magic that made the
monster, but after watching space marines fight acid-spraying
xenomorphs in Aliens or seeing Godzilla stomp Tokyo
concave, the fear you’d normally feel is far, far away.
Slaughterhouse, Lakeside, San
Diego County
This cool little chopper hits the road
red for fans that that demand large men with cutlery turning small
ones into hamburger. Slaughterhouse, filmed in 1987 within
Lakeside (also in the county of San Diego) is about a small business
owner who goes insane when evil bankers threaten to take his
property. Instead of filing a civil lawsuit he tells his
muscle-bound, 300+ lb. mentally challenged son to turn the opposition
into crimson coleslaw with anything heavy and choppy that will do the
job.
While this movie is dreadfully acted, a
little bit awful and rather low budget, the fact that Lakeside ended
up in this bucket of gore is not surprising. A cyclopean, rural
domain containing several bodies of water (including Lindo Lake and
Lake Jennings), and vast stretches of brooding forests sliced into
sections by running rivers, those deep, dark environs are also
stalked by woodsmen who like it wild, scary and far from safety.
Rick Roessler, who also wrote
Slaughterhouse, made a monster that transplanted the Inland
Empire into the blood-streaked mausoleum of cinematic history while
at the same time introducing a villain with a motivation more
intricate and fathomable than, “I’m a killing machine.” If evil
bankers were attacking and your kid was roughly the size, shape and
mental intent of Jason Voorhees, wouldn’t it be fun seeing them end
up like meat on a hook, instead of watching our politicians keep them
off of it?
Hell Night, Redlands, San
Bernardino County
Films about teenagers and co-eds going
someplace awful to get brutally slaughtered one-by-one are a proud
tradition in American horror. Whether it is camping near Silverlake
or ending up in the wrong house in Texas where chainsaws are
standard-issue, wacky kids are always going to somehow end up on a
chopping block somewhere when it comes to entertaining the masses.
Everyone appreciates it when someone improperly adventurous dies.
A group of teenagers are challenged to
spend the night in a gigantic mansion, only to be murdered by the
survivor of a massacre that happened there decades before. Filmed all
over Southern California for a horror-hungry public who weren’t
content just seeing Linda Blair possessed by the devil, Hell Night
was made not only in Los Angeles and South Pasadena but also
throughout the County of Redlands within the Inland Empire.
It’s unusual how the Inland Empire
hosts so many movies about homicidal maniacs. When crazy meets
cutlery, the blood usually flows if there are unaware victims nearby,
and the screams sound better against the quiet, rough hills and
suburban sprawl Redlands is heir too. Even the name of the place
sounds lethal, as if the ground itself was carmine from slaughter.
Someone needs to write a script for a slasher flick called Redlands.
"REDLANDS." Sounds like a title to me.
Hell Night is replete with
affordable fears and fun kills, but watching one psycho just whack a
bunch of young, dumb trespassers gets kind of lame, quick. I’m sure
every foreboding, dilapidated mansion deserves a mass murder, but in
an age of pepper spray, smartphones, MMA training, a proliferation of
firearms and a militarized police force armed with APC’s, it is
hard to imagine a lone suburban maniac successfully stabbing so many
ignorant kids to death uncontested without anyone calling 911.
The Hills Have Eyes,
Victorville, San Bernardino County
In 1977 a fun-loving family went
camping in the desert, only to encounter a fiendish pack of violent,
radioactive cannibals. Wackiness ensued. Wes Craven, the writer and
director of this gritty, bloody beast, made cinematic history with an
almost plausible story about a road trip gone so horribly wrong well
before he created A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Shot in the brutal, rocky landscape
anyone in Victorville can find if they wander into the wilderness
miles from their backyard, it doesn’t take long for the film to
fill you with fear as our hapless, lower middle-class family realizes
they aren’t alone in the lonely, dusty hills they camped out in. By
the violent end they are fighting for their lives against gruesome
thugs that look like they wandered in from The Road Warrior.
Apart from the wonderful casting choice
of using the big, bald, terrifying Michael Berryman as Pluto, the
meanest-looking mutant in the movie (Berryman’s career is the envy
of any professional…he’s also in The Devil’s Rejects,
directed by the immortal Rob Zombie), some of the sorcery of this
film is its realism. Anyone who has camped out in the boonies knows
that there just has to be evil people out there, licking their chops,
and they’d be your bogeyman, if unleashed.
The real horror, however, is observing
the family debase themselves in an orgy of violence to beat their
aggressors. As mom, dad and the kids start to get their murder on,
too, there’s a feeling by the end of the creation that although the
monsters have been fought and brutally beaten down, new ones have
replaced them.
Inland Empire, Los Angeles
County (?)
While David Lynch (the director of
masterpieces such as Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and Lost
Highway) is always lurking on the bleeding edge of modern cinema,
Inland Empire, created in 2006, has one very serious hang up:
the film wasn’t made in the Inland Empire at all, despite its name.
While it is a psychological horror film
(which means its more like Angel Heart or Psycho instead
of Scream or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) about a young
woman relentlessly pursued by an evil, murdering ghost haunting a
cursed screenplay, Inland Empire should be called something
else because it was made in Los Angeles, Hollywood and Poland.
Imagine if Chinatown took place in Sacramento. It may as well
be called Southern California, sans San Bernardino. Thanks a
lot, Lynch.
Paranormal Activity, San Diego
County
Unliving proof that low budget can
still equal big box office bucks, 2007’s Paranormal Activity
is a work replete with dread because of the fact the horror happens
in a suburban home, not in a graveyard, mansion or mausoleum.
Directed by Oren Peli and shot in the thriving metropolis of San
Diego, the film contains scares anyone living in the modern era can
relate to because the demonic nightmare happens in a seemingly normal
house. When the familiar becomes frightening, nowhere feels safe.
A young couple is haunted by an evil
spirit, eventually leading to insanity and murder. The documentary
nature of it merges with the sensation that what you are seeing
really happened, as supernatural occurrences surmount, dark shadows
move in the corners, and something wicked comes their way until fear
and madness gives way to gore. Pass the popcorn, please.
Let's just say after Poltergeist III the girl who played little Carol Anne was done with horror flicks.
Not that it’s the first time suburbia
got it’s slay on in the cinema, but when Tobe Hooper and Steven
Spielberg teamed up for Poltergeist (if a cute little blonde
girl tells you, “They’re here,” leave), the fear
came from having an electrically-charged sledgehammer of big-budget
special effects pound your psyche into oblivion. By contrast, the
more sedate Paranormal Activity has still waters that run
deep, lulling you down into the calm before a corpse reaches up from
the murk to drown you.
The young couple in the story doesn’t
always see the unnatural darkness lurking dangerously behind them,
but the audience does. As their doubt dies when they realize the
terror is real, a small part of your mind wonders if this is film
footage left over from a real demonic attack. The fact it takes place
in a house like yours, instead of the skull-like domicile in The
Amityville Horror, makes it uncertain if going home is safe at
all.
Why aren’t there more horror films
made in the Inland Empire? It has to be way cheaper than it is in Los
Angeles or San Francisco. Wouldn’t you like to see a werewolf
roaming the marble halls of the San Bernardino courthouse, or witness
vampires feasting under a freeway overpass in Fontana?
Here’s to
hoping the Inland Empire has a cinematic future far ghastlier than
before.
We've all seen the brand new trailer for Stranger Things 3. As I've predicted, there is a full-blown possession with Billy. The rot has turned into black ooze, so there's going to be vampires and zombies and some serious body horror. The robotic, lantern jawed man wandering around with a pistol is certainly a reference to The Terminator. The giant blob of flesh, eyes and teeth that seems to be a physical threat in the form of a monster is not only a reference to The Thing, it's also a reference to a Gibbering Mouther from AD&D. This makes sense.
This movie is fuuuuuuuuucked up...
From Eleven's perspective, she's going through those physical changes that turn a child into an adult. This is why the body horror genre, which involves the transmogrification mutilation of flesh, is so important. We are used to our bodies. Attached to them. If our body becomes mutated, diseased, and horrifying, this is a terrible fear to face. Suddenly the horror has gone from being outside to within. Bodies merging with bodies (sex), strange fluids (puberty), the protean nature of our own flesh (becoming an adult) is all something that is happening to Eleven, and we can expect her world to reflect this factual nightmare.
You really, really don't want to fight a Gibbering Mouther. Or become a part of one.
MIRROR PEOPLE
My theory about Kali & Co. being a
big illusion is that in their very first scene, all of them are
living out some action sequence that Eleven would see on television
at the time. They even have an A-Team type van. This initial sequence
is a dream...Eleven's dream. When she meets Kali, all of the
characters seem to be flipped and warped opposites of her friends
back home, only their colors and sex have been flipped. It's like the
Thessalhydra took everything it saw through Will, mixed it with
Eleven's own dreams from watching too much TV, and then tried to
tempt her into staying in Pittsburgh with another group of friends, so
back home the portal could stay closed.
It knows she wants a family so offers her another.
This also explains the odd, dream logic
of the episode that made everyone who watched it feel like it didn't
seem to be in synch with the rest of the show. Kali and her crew
exist in the psychosphere, the realm of dreams, the astral plane, The
Upside Down, and Eleven almost got lost forever in there.
Check out the background, it's important.
SPIRITUAL (ADV)ISOR
When Kali and Eleven have their big
moment where an illusion of her father is conjured to say very nasty
things to his daughter (confirming the molestation theory), there is
a big neon sign right behind them. "SPIRITUAL ADVISOR", it
says, but certain letters don't work. This is not a mistake. The
spiritual part is obvious...the ISOR part takes a little research.
I.S.O.R.
The first ISOR is an Indian institute
dedicated to oilseeds research. Not very scary, but it is an Indian
institution, and Kali is definately Hindi. Continuing with the
research, disturbing results show up.
The next ISOR has to do with research
into Game Theory. To give you an idea, Game Theory is simply the
observation that there are different levels to any game, from board
games to video games to economics and social darwinism. The trick is
to look at the game from a perspective going beyond a mere player to
see the real game being played, in order to avoid falling into an
intellectual rut. ISOR is apparently another name for the university
that discusses a lot of Game Theory.
Following Game Theory, Pee Wee Herman evolves and rises above it all. He's not a pawn, Pee Wee's a player.
Eleven really is doing this when she's
working with Kali. Even the illusion of her father is simply facing
her dark side, the whole reason she's angry, hurt and confused. This
scene is pretty much the final evolution for Eleven. After that she
realizes it is important to leave the group behind to save her
friends back home.
Yet another ISOR relates to a research
group that studies religion, identity and memory involving pedagogy,
which I will explain later. ISOR is very interested in the
interstitial nature of religion, culture and the meaning of life when
it comes down to the individual in society. Religion? Identity?
Memory? Reconstructing mental processes? Now you know why those neon
letters are probably there. Eleven's mind needs fixing. Her
primordial self can do the repairing.
The final ISOR relates to something
called pedagogy. Basically, when dealing with people who have
suffered serious mental trauma, there is a whole list of things you
have to do to help them heal. ISOR is an investigative procedure for
treating people who are having psychological problems, especially
when the initial diagnoses and therapy has ceased to be effective. By
searching the patient's background for former trauma by interactive
dialogue with the patient, success (that is, healing) can be
achieved.
Sounds like Kali talking to Eleven to
fix her mental problem, to me.
I am now going to admit to you that
when Eleven's father appears, there is strange, loopy writing
scrolling down on the walls next to him. I can't tell what it says
and don't know what it means. Sorry. Hey, at least I didn't try to
fake it.
Kali and Eleven's father, a.k.a. Thessalar, the monster maker.
Moving on, the dark, lecherous nature
Eleven's father exhibits (via Kali's ability to research a person's
mind and produce images from inside of it...you know, kind of like a
tulpa...) proves the theory that Eleven's father moonlighted as
Chester the Molester. He even tries to use her sexual infringement
against her...something child molester's often do when
psychologically manipulating a victim into silence.
We get a lot of things from this
meeting. First off, Kali points out that he is still alive. How does
she know that? Second, Kali says that he not only claimed to be their
father (claimed to be is a clue that he might not be Eleven's father)
but seems to indicate that he is Kali's father. Why would she think
that? Because she was at the facility and was raised by Eleven's
father, too, or because she is Demogorgon, or at least the leftover
energy of Demogorgon...a tulpa intentionally created to kill people
Eleven hunted down.
Yes to the can, no to the cat.
Remember, Eleven refused to kill the
cat in the first season, when we saw flashbacks of her experiences.
Over the rainbow (The Rainbow Room) represents the creation of
alters, splinter personalities. A monarch butterfly (The Monarch
Program) conjured by Kali is a reminder of this procedure. Of course
Kali feels like Eleven and her are sisters, and if her father created
the tulpa to kill Russian spies he is Kali's father as well.
REINTEGRATION
Before I go further, I'd like to point
out something. "El" is a term that means gods in general,
or an assembly of gods (in the Bible gods and angels are the same).
So the B'nai Elohim is sort of like congress. "Kali" is the
title of a specific goddess. So saying Kali is like saying
congresswoman. If El is the whole, Kali is part of that whole. It's
like comparing the Senate to a specific senator within the
organization.
Careful viewers noted that when Eleven
banished the Demogorgon, energy seemed to flow out of it, dispersing
into the atmosphere. Some even saw a small, spiritual figure inside
the monster, reaching out to El. I cannot say for sure that my eyes
are seeing the same thing as these people when watching that part. I
just can't see a little glowing figure, although it's obvious energy
is released from the exploding creation.
See the light? Why can't Eleven blow up people like that?
According to physics, energy is neither
created nor destroyed, only although it can be dispersed and
reintegrated. If Kali is a real person, my theory is destroyed. If
she is Eleven's dark side, Kali certainly does a very Jungian job of
helping Eleven face her own evil and overcome it...although Eleven
rejects Kali in the process.
In the show Eleven kills people.
However, there is a stark difference between hunting down and killing
people just doing their job when they are not attacking her (like the
worker Kali and Eleven hunt down, or the Russian spy) and killing
people fighting you. Sure, Eleven killed people, but they had guns
and had already murdered innocent people.
As above, so below.
Eleven realizes she doesn't want to
kill the worker responsible for her mother's electrocution years
later. Kali isn't very happy about this, and just when the argument
comes to a head the police show up and everyone has to escape. Eleven
leaves her, but she has faced her dark side and is a stronger person
for it. Because she had a conversation with her shadow. Jung would be
pleased.
If Kali is real, she's basically doing
the job we've seen repeated in previous 80's films we've already
discussed. Even Rey, in The Last Jedi, basically went into The
Dark Side to realize she is a female clone created by Palpantine (uh,
sorry, spoiler alert) just like he created Annakin (it's why you see
many copies of her, until she faces a shadowy figure in a cloak that
could only be Palpantine). Luke Skywalker went into the cave in
Degobah to confront his dark side. He wasn't ready, and lost to
Vader. Eleven confronted her own dark side, was ready, and beat the
Thessalhydra.
"My possessed clone and cloned female copy shall rule the galaxy as father and daughter!"
THESSALAR
Remember what I said about the Lich
Thessalar? He makes monsters. Kali say's he's her Papa, too. Eleven
is a monster. She even said so. Her Papa made Kali by either by the
same way he made Eleven, or he made Kali because she is the
Doppleganger, the lost sister of Eleven, her splintered personality,
make-believe friend that eventually became the Doppleganger...or just
another girl that ended up with pyschic powers just like Eleven.
Either way, the name sticks.
Is Papa still alive inside The Vale of
Shadows? The Demogorgon jumped on him. It probably drained his blood,
but never got a chance to teleport him and shove a tentacle into his
mouth. Maybe he survived the loss of blood and is in the real world.
Who knows what other monsters he's made?
BACKGROUND WORDS
Like we talked about earlier, what's
going on in the background is very important. To really go over "The
Lost Sister," a chapter everyone agrees is kind of odd, I went
over every background glypho I could. There are a few I couldn't
figure out. The ones that could be researched say very significant
things about the scene.
O.P.T.
Appearing in the right hand corner at 8
minutes and 58 seconds into the episode. This is a psychological
program for international students who want to treat American
patients. Is this a hint of how Kali is going to treat Eleven?
Hmmm...I dunno...kind of a stretch. Let's keep going.
A word is worth a thousand pictures.
LOLA
The crazy white girls with the bow in
her head has a giant LOLA painted above at one point. What is Lola?
Our Lady of Sorrows, a Spanish spirit that serves as an intermediary
between this realm and the next, kind of like a Catholic version of
the Voodoo loa (spirit, or god in Voodoo), Legba. Pretty thin,
however, the spiritual and occult symbolism is there.
MENA
MENA appears over the head of another
one of Kali's friends. A search of MENA indicated that it stands for
Middle East and North Africa. The young woman in question obviously
is that ethnicity, which is why it is there, to teach the audience
that these random background letters are there for a reason.
KALI THE GODDESS
A picture of the goddess Kali can be
seen above the staircase when she first appears. That is not much of
a clue to her being a tulpa or anything, but it's still something in
the background that tells us who someone is. Rather odd that Kali and
Eleven both agree that she was a piece of her that was missing. Kali
meets up with Eleven, and now feels whole. As if she is a piece of
Eleven's puzzle. What did Eleven do to the Demogorgon in Season 1?
She touched it on the shoulder when she was in The Upside Down. Kali
touches Eleven on the shoulder when she's in The Upside Down,
listening to the Sheriff.
"hel"
8:53 in, you also see "hel"
in blue letters. This is the realm of the dead in Norse mythology,
and is also a god of the dead in the same pantheon. Hel also means
hidden in the same language. This glypho (I keep using that word
instead of "glyph" for a reason) keeps showing up around
the punk rock guy.
Symbolism.
THE MOON – YESOD
The Moon features prominently in the
night sky above when Eleven embraces Kali. In the Kabbalah, The Moon
is Yesod, a sort of go between area after the material realm but
before you get anywhere else. It's dark side in the Qlipoth (the
opposite, evil twin of the Shepiroth in the Kabbalah) is Gamaliel,
whose demon queen is Lilith. In other esoteric Western occult beliefs
The Moon is the dwelling place of Maya, which is illusion.
O'BEDLAM
This phrase shows up a lot when Kali's
friends are assembled. It means "of bedlam," as in these
individuals are related to a place. Bedlam is a word that can mean
Pandemonium. This word can also mean Hades, Hell, i.e. The
Underworld. So these characters are basically of the dead. They're
ghosts.
"PAWN." Who's the player controlling the pieces?
PAWN
This term appears over Kali's head in
one scene in blue and red letters. Why put that there? I thought that
place was a factory? Why is it also a pawn shop? That word is there
to tell you Kali is a pawn. Eleven is in a trap. She's being tempted
by a new family to give in to her dark side and hunt down people to
murder them, just like Demogorgon in the last season. If she stays
there, she can't close the portal. Kali is just another tentacle on
the Thessalhydra, following orders. Just like when you are playing a
video game, the monsters you face are just pawns to the machine.
It's all in the mind.
BARBELITH, KING MOB AND GRANT MORRISON
At this point I've jackhammered my
tulpa theory to undeath, I'd like to point out two glyphos tagged on
the wall when Eleven walks in on Kali's crew. They both appear at the
same time, they are both important, and they both relate to the same
story and person: Grant Morrison.
Aside from writing more comics than you
can shake a hookah at, Grant Morrison is also a practicing occultist,
specializing in something many of us old skool occult types kind of
hate called "Chaos Magic," which is basically an anything
goes kind of approach to magic where instead of sticking with Voodoo,
LeVay Satanism, Freemasonry, Goetic or even Thelmanic, a person using
anything they can to summon the arcane forces of whatever, using
anything available, from mythology to film, television and comic
books.
Barbelith, The Invisibles.
This arcane history of Morrison is
important to what happens next. The two words written on the wall
that are important in The Lost Sister are "Berbelith" and
"King Mob. " Each are two words written by one man that
could only come from him and are from the same comic books series,
The Invisibles.
To explain the comic book The
Invisibles to you would take a stack of books on the occult and 23
hours. Simply put the comic series, published by Vertigo comics
(DC's dark side), is about an organization of anarchistic,
rebellious, iconoclastic occultists who are trying to destroy an evil
occult group that runs the world, all the while trying to usher in a
New Age so indescribable anyone who sees it can't even fathom the
nature of it. Whatever this glorious future is, the bad guys employ
evil magic to keep it from happening. The comic book is about that
conflict as it ranges across the planet and even time.
Grant Morrison
King Mob is a character in that comic,
and even Morrison has admitted that the character is him. In an
interview with Disinfo.com the writer talks about how over time, he
became the character. He also has mentioned that in real life, he has
met a tulpa of this character, i.e. a realistic double of an
imaginary being, as mentioned in the works of Blavatsky. Hell, even
the creators of Superman admitted to meeting the character in real
life, so Morrison is not alone.
So King Mob is an imaginary being
created by a person who has described the character as a tulpa. Where
it gets more complicated is that while Stranger Things 2 takes place
in the Orwellian year of 1984, The Invisibles wasn't released until
1994...ten years later. That's a decade. The person who wrote that on
the wall wouldn't be able to in 1984 because the term DIDN'T EXIST
YET.
That's just one reference. However,
Berbelith is another that connects to The Invisibles. It's one thing
to have a single reference, but two? That's a clue to the audience
that the choice is not an accident, because I'm pretty sure The
Duffer Brothers don't get paid big bucks to fuck up.
Berbelith is a stranger symbol created
by Morrison, although it is really supposed to be, brace yourself, a
massive satellite hidden behind the Earth's moon that looks like a
gigantic pink fake boob. Each of the important characters in The
Invisibles sees it. The term even appears on a wall in the astral
plane at one point as a character experiences an epiphany.
What's spookier is that Morrison has
said that he came up with the term in a dream. He saw it written on a
wall in his sleep and decided to use it. Berbelith is a term that
does exist, though, but what it represents in the comic is a
positive, feminine force, guiding each of the characters, as well as
humanity, into a new evolution and a better future.
Barbelith is a combination of two
names, Barbelo, a goddess of thought in Gnosticism, and Lilith, a
dark goddess of magic in Wicca and other occult disciplines. Lilith is
also a dimension overlapping our own in Jewish Kabbalah. This makes
sense because in The Invisibles, characters only see Barbelith in a
dream. Morrison claimed he saw the name in a dream. So Eleven was
dreaming, which is why she saw it.
King Mob & Co.
Remember, Stranger Things is about
other dimensions. You are used to four, three dimensional space
(which you can travel around a perceive), and time (which you can
only travel in one direction, forwards, while perceiving the
dimension in only one direction, backwards). The fifth dimension,
which occultists simply call the astral plane (Eleven would probably
refer to it as The Upside Down), is the imagination. Dreams, day
dreams, fantasies...to the occult this takes place in a dimension
beyond space and time, connected by all minds. Sort of like the
Internet.
Yes, it sounds crazy, but we are
talking about the occult. So a 1994 reference (or two) in a 1984
story line would make sense...if it took place on the astral plane.
Otherwise "King Mob" and "Barbelith" are rather
unique in that they are artificial words made up by a person ten
years later, which means the words couldn't exist in real life.
By the way, O'Bedlam is also a
character in The Invisibles.
CHARLES LEDBETTER
Here is something worth mentioning in
reference to the Demogorgon, Kali and King Mob. When I mention, "the
occult" I'm referencing a pattern of beliefs constantly repeated
in books written on the subject by hundreds of individuals across
hundreds of years, even up until today. One of these books is
Theosophical Manual No. 5, The Astral Plane, It's Scenery,
Inhabitants and Phenomena, by Charles Ledbetter.
A heavy read that is no joke to think
through, the book describes many different supernatural subjects,
what happens when you die, what happens when you are dead and
everyone forgets about you completely (it ain't pretty...), vampires,
necromancers, ghosts, graveyard hauntings, angels and artificial
elementals.
An artificial elemental is not like a
person. It is something created by a person, whether it is
intentional or not. So far we have not seen another Demogorgon, like
the one encountered by Eleven in The Upside Down, the deep black
space in her head that is separate from The Vale of Shadows. The
Pollywogs looked like the Demogorgon for a reason...they come from
the same source but are related to humans.
What happened to the Russian spy? Did he end up like Barbara?
Remember, Eleven's evil scientist
father couldn't get her to kill living things. So he made a split
personality that became Demogorgon to kill the Russian spy. After
that, Eleven was forced to make contact with this demon from inside
her mind...and the resulting shock opened a portal into the place
where it came from, causing the creature to appear in our world. To
Theosophy, it's an unconscious artificial elemental.
These things can be good or bad, but
the bad ones are terrible in that once freed from their creator, they
will go about trying to exist by basically terrorizing people and
eating their life force...kind of like the Demogorgon, Eleven's
personal demon, ended up doing. Kali is that artificial elemental,
according to my tulpa theory, and she's trying to get back to Eleven.
How?
ELEVEN VERSUS THE THESSALHYDRA
Look at "The Lost Sister" this way, now
that you know more about The Shining, the occult, and psychic powers in Stranger Things. Eleven sees a picture of a girl. The girl is in
her memory. It's just an image. We have no proof Kali is that exact
girl. The opening sequence in the show, where Kali and co. escape
from the cops, is a dream Eleven is having, formed from a strange
mish-mosh of the TV shows she's watching.
Eleven gets off the bus and wanders
around until she gets to an empty warehouse. She hallucinates
everything, changes her clothes, hair, makeup etc. and then has a
mental epiphany. Kali tempts her into wandering around lost and
crazy. Eleven resists her dark side, resists going crazy and probably
dying of a brain aneurism, and then gets back on the bus. The
Thessalhydra controlled Demogorgon just like it controlled the
remaining energy that became Kali.
"YOU'RE ALL DEAD..."
As Eleven strolls down the Hades-like
path to where Kali is, a random, crazy homeless person is yelling
"You're all dead." If Eleven fell asleep on the bus, and
her soul is free to travel in the astral plane, or psychosphere (the
realm of dreams, imagination and higher truths, like numbers and
symbols) it makes sense she'd get a warning along the way. When
Eleven first meets Kali's mates, they are scary, mean people, who
steal money and kill individuals Eleven wouldn't. Kind of like
ghosts. Or demons.
"WE WERE DEAD..."
The characters around Kali act odd.
Aside from the words all around that tell us these people are dead,
in the realm of the dead, and are now haunting Eleven's imagination,
they talk about how they were dead until Kali found them.
In spiritualism there is an
understanding that just as humans are basically flesh batteries for
electrical charges the people used to call spirits, spirits can stick
around and amplify themselves by sticking together, like oil in
water, bacteria, and other microscopic life. The Bible even talks
about a spirit reinforcing itself with others like it before going
back to possess a person. A powerful spirit will dominate lesser
spirits, allowing it to function.
Never forget a source material for Stranger Things...H.P. Lovecraft. This means that the Duffer Brothers
are taking angels, demons, Hell, monsters and spiritual possession
and repackaging the whole nightmarish affair for a materialistic,
rational, atheist, scientific reader, just like Lovecraft. While the
kids use AD&D imagery and the adults use scientific thought to
figure out what in the Hades they are encountering, it's worth noting
that other that randomly scream, "Jesus Christ!" none of
the character turn to spiritualists to figure out the problem, even
when Will gets possessed by the Devil or something.
All in the mind. Notice the golden ray of light, indicating telepathy. The film poster is that color for a reason.
So Demogorgon is a demon...repackaged
as something horrific out of Eleven's head, made flesh by an arcane,
pseudo-scientific process. Kali is a ghost, trying to tempt Eleven
into doing evil things and not closing the portal into where the
Thessalhydra dwells. The entity possessing Will is nothing like the
demon Pazzuzu possessing Regan in The Exorcist. Instead, Will's
personality change is more like memory loss and brain damage.
We are never going to know for sure in
Stranger Things when we encounter the classic horror movie monsters
you and I grew up with. Vampires, demons, spiritual possession and
ghosts are going to end up like the hauntings in The Shining, where
it's not specters, it's mass telepathy, though time and space. When
Jack Nicholson walks into The Gold Room, and then into the bathroom
to talk to the phantom waiter, everything he sees and experiences is
an illusion, much in the same way Eleven does in Chicago. It's the
Thessalhydra, shining at her, using Kali (an evil spirit/split
personality) and Will (he's unconscious when she's unconscious, so
it's a mental assault somewhat like Dream
Master).
Why make contact with it?
"IT'S A TRAP!"
When Mike appears to Eleven, he yells
his line, which is a reference to Empire Strikes Back. This line is
repeated to Eleven twice. Why? Because one trap is what he and his
friends are in. The other is Eleven's. Notice how Kali even
interrupts communications between Eleven and her friends. Eleven is
trapped by a demon, and her attachment to Mike saves her.
WHO/WHAT IS KALI?
If I am wrong about Kali than she'll
show up in Stranger Things 3 and other characters will see and
interact with each other. I have a feeling that instead, Eleven is
going to once again end up being separate from her friends when she
hangs out with Kali.
Jungian psychology for the females.
Even if all the references written on
the walls in the abandoned warehouse Kali is dwelling in are just
random, it does not matter. Kali can be real and still represent
mythical, literary archetypes and Jungian concepts of a psychological
dark side that allows Eleven to overcome her abusive background and
take on Thassalhydra. The Duffer Brothers don't have to explain
everything because it's supposed to be unknown anyhow, to properly
reference it's source material, Mr. Lovecraft.
If Kali was a splinter personality of
Eleven's created to kill people that was made flesh by a psychic
electromagnetic pulse (a strange gestalt of many conspiracy theories,
from The Monarch Program to MKULTRA to The Philadelphia Experiment to
The Montauk Project) which eventually lost it's body but haunted her
former creator (Eleven) to the point of momentary delusion, we'll
probably never know for certain.
"Double, double, toil and trouble..."
Many will believe that Kali is real
because of her photograph. According to the occult, evil spirits can pretend to be a
anybody in someone's memory, and masquerading as a photograph of a
person you know can be done. Eleven's mother seeing Kali in her
memory along with Eleven? We don't know if she's looking at Kali or
Eleven (Eleven's mom completely ignores Kali), so it's as if the
image has been injected into the memory artificially. Aside from a
bad photo and someone else's bad memory, we don't see a single
flashback from Eleven's memory proving Kali's existence.
Her make-believe friend.
Also, Eleven hasn't seen Kali since her
young childhood. Since there were at least eleven children involved
in the Hawkins lab experiments, it is reasonable to conclude that
they are all dead. Kali could be a ghost. Or she could be real,
hiding out someplace, while the Demogorgon presumes her identity (in
the same way the Thessalhydra pretends to be Will) and attempts to
trick Eleven into being an evil person that kills people, which is
what the government tried to mind control her into doing, anyhow.
The
government mind control conspiracy theories touched upon by The
Duffer Brothers are important to recognize, and the background
imagery, words and clues wouldn't exist unless they were important.
Her make-believe friend.
IN SUMMARY
If I am wrong about Kali, she will appear in the flesh in season 3 and socialize with the other characters. That might be the case, and that's OK because the symbolism is still there and consistent with 80's film concepts regarding the Hegelian Dialectic and enlightenment via a conservation with the shadow. This is also a reference to Dr. Carl Jung and the writings of Joseph Campbell, who in turn influenced films like Star Wars.
The Duffer Brothers continued their pattern of referencing source material from the 80's to form a film pastiche that is both the old and the new, horrifying the audience with monsters, psychic powers and conspiracy theories, while at the same time telling a tale that is very new. As before, the second season took occult material and overlapped it with science and child-like observations and logic.
Nobody talked about the occult or the supernatural. The show is still grounded securely in H.P. Lovecraft's godless, materialistic, scientifically-minded philosophies by showing us the terrors of The Unknown while at the same time avoiding a precise definition of the supernatural. We can expect more of the same from season 3.
