{"id":9080,"date":"2017-04-16T16:43:40","date_gmt":"2017-04-16T21:43:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=9080"},"modified":"2017-04-16T16:43:40","modified_gmt":"2017-04-16T21:43:40","slug":"belated-movie-reviews-187","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2017\/04\/16\/belated-movie-reviews-187\/","title":{"rendered":"Belated Movie Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This missive was received from an unnamed\u00a0cetacean research center. I include the attached note directly.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hd.wallpaperswide.com\/thumbs\/underwater_whales-t2.jpg?resize=374%2C242\" width=\"374\" height=\"242\" \/>The highly speculative translation contained herein will not be published in any research journal, due to the uncertainty of the accuracy of the translation, as well as the explosive nature of the contents. Internal dissension in the research team prevents even the association of researchers&#8217; names with the paper.\u00a0 Nevertheless, the content is considered important enough that it must be shared. There are unanswered questions implicit in the material, for which we have not yet found answers; those have become the focus of our next research.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The few footnotes are our own, consisting of interpolations of passages which may not be removed without leaving the content in chaos.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Within this sacred\u00a0medium through which we move, let it be known to one and all, the strainers and the toothed, the breachers and the lurkers, even those who munch upon\u00a0their cousins and\u00a0all those who sing throughout the seas, that a tale from our recent plague has come within our realm of understanding, and through assiduous study we, the blues, have partially deciphered it.<\/p>\n<p>They call this tale of horror and heroism <em><strong>Moby Dick<\/strong><\/em><sup><a href=\"#1\">[1]<\/a><\/sup>. We will treat upon this shocking name later.<\/p>\n<p>This macabre story records, finally, the motivations of those who are merely parasites upon our oceans and swimmers of same, those who left and never returned, whose ancient forbears grew legs to walk upon the land.\u00a0 Following an unattached male of this species, a transcriptor of the tale and one with which we confess some feelings of brotherhood, we see, through repeated usage, how they name the individuals of their species; the rivalries of the males, fighting for dominance in more physical ways than our melodious competitions; the rhythms of their life, their groupings, the long separations of the mated pairs as well as the desperate lives of those unmated. It brings to the fore the pressures of survival, and how they have molded\u00a0their species into conformance with the niche chosen for it.<\/p>\n<p>The tale is literally bathed in horror, but the novelty of the tale\u00a0obscures the atrocity until it is brought to the fore. The\u00a0singer of this tale seeks a quiet place to rest his mind,\u00a0some place to find\u00a0a holy cessation of thought.\u00a0He is\u00a0introduced to just such an eddyless cove and seeks the blessed state, but is almost immediately interrupted by the intrusion of a similarly intentioned cousin. This one, unlike the tale-singer, has decorated his hide with scarrings, blackened patterns of stories, no doubt beyond our ken, brought into stark relief by the light of a single lamp.<\/p>\n<p>And so the singular song of\u00a0evil\u00a0begins.<\/p>\n<p><em>The very lamp that lights their resting place\u00a0is fueled by our holy blanket against the cold depths<sup><a href=\"#2\">[2]<\/a><\/sup>, liquified through heat,\u00a0then lit afire to decant its brilliance\u00a0for the convenience\u00a0of these&#8230; parasites.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>For those of our cousins uncertain as to the visual aspect of such a lamp, consider the tales told of the mountains of the deep, spitting liquid rock, the lifeblood of the holder of our medium; this is fire, and this emits light. As proof of the holiness of our blankets, the oil rendered from them is\u00a0set afire in order to emit light. But not for holy reasons unless, as we debate, they have a reverence for the\u00a0brilliant orb in the sky.\u00a0 But this tale is not a time for philosophy.<\/p>\n<p>The tale then describes, from novel visual angles, an early specimen of those contraptions which they build to float upon the surface of our sacred home, and this may be considered instructive as to their methods. But the scholarly mood of the tale\u00a0is quickly broken in the most\u00a0monstrous way, as the men\u00a0in their &#8220;ship&#8221; encounter one of us.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/MobyDickRenderingScene.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9098 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/MobyDickRenderingScene.jpg?resize=476%2C267&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"476\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/MobyDickRenderingScene.jpg?w=476&amp;ssl=1 476w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/MobyDickRenderingScene.jpg?resize=300%2C168&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/MobyDickRenderingScene.jpg?resize=250%2C140&amp;ssl=1 250w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/MobyDickRenderingScene.jpg?resize=150%2C84&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 476px) 100vw, 476px\" \/><\/a>They set upon a venerable male as he rests upon the surface, gulping down the sacred air to resuscitate himself for\u00a0his hunt.\u00a0 And now\u00a0the old one\u00a0has himself\u00a0become the hunted. Cruel shaped and purified metal, called <em>harpoons<\/em> and <em>lances<\/em>, are driven into our brother, and as we watch, he soon spouts out\u00a0his life force and gives himself back to the great living sea.<\/p>\n<p>But even this last selfless act\u00a0is denied to him. In a scene so repulsive that many of us turned away\u00a0our eye, veritably damaged at the atrocity, our cousin is callously butchered, hauled onto the vessel, and there chopped and cooked until his very blanket of life has become an oil.<\/p>\n<p>The oil for their infernal lamps.<\/p>\n<p>With effort, we\u00a0strive to\u00a0see this from their side: through these efforts,\u00a0this loathsome harvest, the males accumulate resources and prestige. We do not know how females also accumulate the necessary prestige that presages mating; we only see a bit of that for the male of the species. Or so we tentatively predict; our store of knowledge is relatively small.<\/p>\n<p>But all this is swept away in the horror of the tragedy. However, in some ways, the following scenes have an abominable aspect that&#8217;s even worse, as they chronicle the state of mind (as we think they have such) of their leader, and it&#8217;s an unreasoned\u00a0<em>hatred<\/em> of our kind. True, he has incurred some injury that is\u00a0accounted to us, but as it was\u00a0suffered during their hunting of our kind, what of it? The\u00a0righteous creature does not expect to escape to the next stage unscathed; it is the badge one bears in the great hunts, just as some of our cousins hunt the great many-arms, and suffer for it. This leader, this <em>Captain Ahab<\/em>, as they call him, is diseased in the mind and dangerous, having lost the true way. Indeed, in a scene in which his kind call out to him for succor, he refuses his aid, for such is his immoral rage, his anger at the just realities of being, that he must pursue the one who brought him injury, even though the injury was nobly inflicted, as if the injury was an insult to a holy creature.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dvdtalk.com\/reviews\/images\/reviews\/196\/1442012025_2.jpg?resize=446%2C251\" width=\"446\" height=\"251\" \/>At this juncture, we\u00a0look to\u00a0to our own mythos, and return to a point we earlier bypassed. We believe this tale is, indeed, named for one of our mythic great male rogues, <em>Moby Dick<\/em><sup><a href=\"#3\">[3]<\/a><\/sup>, a prodigious and furious white who turned the clam inside out, hunting the very parasites who\u00a0hounded him, and\u00a0in his lonely pursuit, acquiring many grievous wounds and scars. But, as our forebears have passed down the tale, for Moby Dick it was not a fury at the honorable pricks of the hunted, but their unslaked hunger for\u00a0death and more death; ruthlessly taking calves, mothers, and males all. This\u00a0act concentrated his\u00a0fury until all he lived for was the death of these parasites, and so he became a great defender of our kind, rampaging until he met his end in some lonely, unchronicled\u00a0ocean.<\/p>\n<p>We speculate upon the purpose of the parasite&#8217;s tale, for in the end Moby Dick triumphs, a few more\u00a0scars in his holy hide, leaving only the carrier of the tale to survive and convey it to the rest of his kind. Is it cautionary? Let not thy pride, thy conception of self, drive you to murder\u00a0your prey in defiance of the ways of your kind?<\/p>\n<p>But we have a balm for our grief.\u00a0\u00a0The sight of Moby Dick, however crudely rendered, destroying\u00a0the hated parasite, reminds ourselves that even a rogue, an unmated male made of fury and storm, has\u00a0his role in the great song of life.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><a name=\"1\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><sup>1<\/sup>A guess based on the content of their missive; further, but with less confidence, we suppose the movie of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Moby_Dick_(1956_film)\" target=\"_blank\">1956<\/a>, as the novel would be less likely to survive in their context, and some material they mention suggests the 1956 version.<\/p>\n<p><a name=\"2\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><sup>2<\/sup>This must be a reference to the blanket of blubber all whales grow.<\/p>\n<p><a name=\"3\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><sup>3<\/sup>A phonetic rendition is impossible, nor are the constituent elements of the <em>nominative<\/em> other known words, such as <em>Baker<\/em>; we substitute the human name to retain cohesion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This missive was received from an unnamed\u00a0cetacean research center. I include the attached note directly. The highly speculative translation contained herein will not be published in any research journal, due to the uncertainty of the accuracy of the translation, as well as the explosive nature of the contents. Internal dissension \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2017\/04\/16\/belated-movie-reviews-187\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9080"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9115,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9080\/revisions\/9115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}