Heart’s Afire

Heart’s Afire

Signs of the times: My observations of the changes in the nature of the dramatization of late adolescent girls becoming women.

I have been watching movies since 1948. Artists are a vehicle for spirit inspiration. They see in Ways even seers cannot. Raphael’s “Madonna and Child” speaks, without words. Movies are an international discourse, via the Collective Imagination. The recent Oscar dominance, of the movie: “everything everywhere all at once”, recognized that linear time might well be a fiction, and modes of consciousness are really trapped in the Now, while having some quality of immortality, meaning, and struggles about choice.

Pretty much phenomena revealing the transformation Rudolf Steiner called: the appearance of the Consciousness Soul.

Between Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and James Cameron … the imaginative and technical capacities of film arts generated the “block buster”. Movies are now costing and making money in the billions of dollars.

My first serious study of these arts, in television, was done around 1997, when I was living with my daughter and her husband, who were fans of Star Trek the Next Generation, and had taped them all. I had watched almost all of the episodes myself, but now I could have the time to let the themes unfold, and weave together a “whole that is greater than the sum of the parts”.

The underlying riddle was: What does it mean to be a human being?

In the episode: “The Measure of a Man”, Data, a one of a kind android member of the Enterprises crew, is the center of a series of dialogues about whether or not he could be “owned” by Star Fleet. A scientist wanted to take him apart, and figure out how to make more, as Data had been found on a planet, and later went through Star Fleet Academy to become a crew member.

This question of ownership was decided in a kind of court of law way, with Captain Picard speaking to save Data, and Data’s best friend, first officer Ricker, was ordered to prove that Data was a thing that could be owned.

Through their friendship, Data’s friends knew he had an off switch. To prove his case, of Data’s thingness, Riker dramatically and unexpected turned Data off.

Picard finds a way, by arguing the real moral question is not whether or not Data is human, but who are we if we learn to make more Datas, who are stronger, faster, intellectually superior, and possible immortal if not destroyed . Do we make such amazing sentience just to send it into hostile places humans can’t go? Do we kill them to save ourselves?

The judge agrees. Data is unique. Leave him to be whoever or whatever he wants to be. What does he want? The fans know he strives to be more and more human. In fact, there is always a story line that includes him try to learn how to tell jokes.

I also study the works of Clint Eastwood, in film, and David E. Kelley in television. Want to see the consciousness soul dramatized? Watch Eastwood’s films: “Million Dollar Baby” and “Gran Torino”. Want to have some laughs, at the same time as very intelligent discussions of social issues? Watch Kelley’s “Boston Legal”.

Both men have a wonderful sensitivity to woman’s quests. Obviously, not being a woman can be alleged to be a flaw of sorts. Just remember that these arts involve a lot of folk working cooperatively, and women are everywhere in the process.

As a male, I have my own issues as regards women. Some years ago I thought about this, and decided that while we were both human, we were not the same species of human – they were, relative to me – alien as it were. Unknowable. Worthy of listening to, but often not understood. Mainly, I worked at not letting my limits get in the way of trying all the time to love one.

I’ve also contributed to the raising of three adolescent girls becoming women; and, I worked as an “aide” in mental hospitals, for about two decades. Trying the quell an outright fight between two teenage girls was quite hard, what with there being no rules, and biting and hair pulling the norm.

Let us shift gears, and speed past a lot of history – where are the film arts today, as regards girls becoming women? Keeping in mind that the female adolescent nature is full of the wild. Rules need not apply.

The woman as a kick ass force of nature, not needing a man at all, first appears four decades ago, when we had Princes Lea (Star Wars series), Ripley (Alien series), and Sarah Conner (Terminator series). I’ll never forget the viewing of Cameron’s “Terminator Two – Jughment Day”, in the theater with an living audience.

Cameron gives us a set of pictures – from Sarah Conner’s nightmares, of a view of a playground with mothers and children, as the force and effects of an atom bomb, whose cosmic heat and light burns much to ash immediately, the skeletons last, after which then is all blown away by a ferocious wind.

The audience was stunned into a silence, that lasted about ten minutes.

Jaws scared us about oceans, and the theme music is iconic. Same with the music of The X-Files.

Over the course of my life, housewives became heroines, and heroines became younger and younger. With the character Katness Everdeen, from “The Hunger Games”, we see clearly the late adolescent girl become a woman. She sees what is right, from the point of view of her own heart’s mind, and acts, … hardly any gap between seeing and acting at all.

In a quite recent series for television, “The Last of Us”, this end of civilization tale shows the course of a young girl becoming a woman. The drama is excruciating, when we take account of the trials she has to face to survive. The underlying causal theme involves Nature producing a virus that transforms everyone bitten into something not human. The girl is immune, and a priceless “commodity”.

End of civilization movies are everywhere today. One common type is the zombie film. It is basically obvious to most sane people, as our world continues its destructive paths, the blood (energy) sucking social forms – the multinational corporation – are the anti-life zombies.

Another streaming video series (a long movie) is Station Eleven. Again the heroine is young and female. The time is post-apocalyptic, and this question is being asked here, and in most such films, is: There has got to be a better way. Some folk in this tale, travel all about, giving shows to different – otherwise separate – communities.

A brand new imaginative series, only three episodes so far, is called “The Power”. In the beginning we are introduced to teenage female characters, who suffer greatly at the hands of various kinds of people who care only for themselves.

Each is holding in some serious anger. Those situations lead to the girl’s anger, when released, causing electrical discharges from their hands. Images of this begin to dominate social media, and the powers that be don’t know what to do with the outbreaks everywhere of fires.

Politicians want to lie. The men holders of power themselves have children who display this “power”. It apparently can be transferred to another older female. The science discovers that this outbreak is the result of a new organ, being created by “evolution”. The placement of this organ is between the heart Chakra and the Throat Chakra (the film doesn’t say this, the images do, however).

It is a conjunction of nerve tissue, and related blood vessels etc, which to x-ray is shaped like a pair of “wings”. It rests in the area of the clavicle bones in the upper chest.

In the so-called real world we have seen a number of young girls who become noteworthy examples to others. Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai come to mind. News reports for Muslim countries, describe that where there are riots and protests, these are often are led by teenage girls. The world’s movies model the wild passions of such becoming women, in the solving of social crisis. They can be seen for free on a smart phone.

In Hermetic Science, the electrical fluid is the fire element – or will – principle.

Rudolf Steiner: GA-212

“For what has thus rayed together into a center becomes, at the time of puberty, the etheric heart. The etheric heart he had before this time he had received as heritage through forces inherent in the embryo. When man gathers his ether body and with it approaches the physical organism a kind of etheric heart, a substitute etheric heart, so to speak, is drawn together by the forces of the physical body. But this etheric heart which man has in childhood slowly decays — this may not be a very nice expression, but it does fit the situation — and is replaced gradually, as the decaying processes take place, by the new etheric heart. “One can say that not until puberty is man’s own etheric heart present — formed out of his own etheric body. Thus, he no longer has a provisional heart. All the ether forces active in man up until the time of puberty have a tendency to provide him with a fresh etheric heart.”