The Green Knight Movie and Prophecy

Spoilers incoming! I also assume you have read the poem and watched the movie. 

This is a prologue to my post. In order to understand my ultimate point about this movie I highly suggest reading this prologue. Danke.

At the turn of the 20th century there was a German composer by the name of Strauss. Strauss was a naturalist composer: he valued painting a scene with sounds over melody. He was quite good at it... but that doesn't mean everyone liked it. I'm not sure I would. Regardless, Strauss was regarded as the greatest composer since Wagner.

In the twilight of Strauss's career he was asked to provide music to a production called Joseph and Potiphar's Wife. Now, in order for you to understand my point about The Green Knight we need to discuss what the actual story of Joseph and Potiphar's Wife is, and contrast it with the Strauss.

Joseph's story is the capstone of the book of Genesis, thematically closing that book out. Joseph was a good man, but whose jealous brothers sold him into slavery, into Egypt. When Joseph arrived in Egypt he was sold to Potiphar. Now, most Americans think of slavery like Uncle Tom's Cabin. That's not what slavery was in the vast majority of world's history. Think more parent-child: the owner was responsible for keeping the slave safe and fed, and was held accountable for his slave's behavior. The slave in turn obeyed the master and did the work assigned to him. People would sell themselves into slavery to pay off debts. 

There is an American equivalent to slavery: joining the military. You'll find many of the trappings of historical slavery present in all militaries, and without them you wouldn't be able to defend a country. Period. Sorry to all liberals who wanted to entertain the notion that slavery is inherently horrific and that we've removed it from our society. It's not and we really can't.

Now, Joseph proved himself many times over to Potiphar. Potiphar grew to rely upon Joseph so much that he barely paid any mind to anything else than what he ate. 

Welp, Potiphar's wife wanted to sleep with Joseph. Joseph said no, so Potiphar's wife accused him of attempting to rape her to Potiphar. Joseph ended up in prison, and from there managed to become second in the whole kingdom. He saved his brothers from a famine and brought them to live with him in Egypt, where they had their own land. Evil was transmuted to good, and forgiveness won out.

Strauss's version paints things very differently. Potiphar's wife is a dissolute woman, craving experience to cure her ennui. She has everything she wants materially and is thus miserable. When she meets Joseph she sees the spark of what she's always wanted: joy, fulfilment. She attempts to seduce him, in an effort to make him (and thus his spiritual experiences) hers. Joseph repulses her, and the angels come and rescue him, leaving Potiphar's wife to collapse into complete spiritual death. There's no forgiveness, no resolution, no overcoming of evil with good. There's nothing but darkness.

If Joseph and Potiphar's Wife doesn't sum up the 17th-19th centuries then life is absurd. Having thoroughly bought into materialism and industry, Western Europe had become obsessed with war as the final glory. To be European and American was to love war, as the cultural myth told it. But the rise of occultism, Socialism, and democracy proved the soul of humanity was still in there, yearning for true experience, but assembling the absolutely wrong ways to go about getting it. A great war had been prophesied by many for years. The spiritual rot was almost total. And everyone felt it, somehow.

World War I happened; Potiphar's wife collapsed in on herself.

Aesthetics is the height of morality, as Anne Rice unerringly stated. To enjoy something is to say it is consonant with the narrative that you live in. This narrative is a complex interweaving of culture, religion, and personal experience, which those who are wise can barely parse out. So when something is regarded as highly as The Green Knight is by our culture it's important to be mindful that your opinion is rarely your own. What the world values is always flawed, is always fundamentally wrong. And it is a part of you and how you think. So is their admiration of The Green Knight misjudged, truly evil, or something stranger than both?

We'll get there folks.

Some adaptations are just an attempt at a remake of their source. They usually miss their mark, as no movie can equal the depth of a book. Movies have a different strength, one of images and movement. It's usually better for an adaptation to be a response to the source, possibly even a critique. What makes the source (in this case the poem) so good? The best adaptations I've seen ask this question and stick to it. The Green Knight is one of the best adaptations I've ever seen. Each detail is lovingly rendered, the acting is poetry, the way the story is filled in would make any poet jealous. It's obvious Lowery -the director - has an immense love for the poem and his movie is meant to be taken with the source, not in replacement of it. This is one of the few adaptations I've seen that drips with such affection for its source material. There's a deeply personal element in this movie, so strong you can practically see it in the mists.

I'll take it a step further: The Green Knight is prophetic of our age. It is the Joseph and Potiphar's Wife of the 21st century. Lowery's personal response strikes a chord so deep it's transcended individual experience and become reflective of Western civilization in the 21st century. And, just like Joseph and Potiphar's Wife, it tells what will happen to our civilization. There's something so primal going on that it can be nothing else.

And that is utterly terrifying.

For, you see, Gawain is not like Sir Gawain at all. There is very little honor in him. His shield, the same shield with the Theotokos which protects Sir Gawain of the poem, is smashed because of a lack of gratitude. Appearing good (what Gawain calls honor) is the only thing that truly drives him. It is a flimsy thing, this honor, only slightly more flimsy than the green sash his mother gave him. And Gawain's conception of this honor crumbles when actually faced with death. 

And to be fair, Sir Gawain fails at the last as well! Even though he saves Camelot from becoming a second Troy his resolve falters and he tries to cheat death. Despite what Sir Gawain does right he can't stick the landing either. But Sir Gawain puts the green sash where others can see it, goes home, confesses his faults, and isn't just forgiven: the other knights wear the green sash in hopes they can live up to Sir Gawain's failure. The poem is a Christian story, at heart. Your wrongs need not control you. There is hope, always. And the virtue of a person does not go away merely because they made a mistake. And no one can avoid mistakes. So therefore no one is destroyed by them.

David Lowery is not a Christian.

Neither is our culture.

Presented with a similar situation, of failing to face death, Gawain imagines what his life would be like if he ran. And he decides it would do him no good to run from the axe. He wouldn't change. And Gawain needs to change. But he has no hope, so he can't forgive. So he can't change. Neither does America; we have no real hope, so we won't  forgive, and thus change, either. We must have our sick version honor, as we cancel and riot and lie lie lie lie in an insane need to feel something other than the yawning darkness before us that we cannot forgive, and thus conquer. Whatever things can get you to not look at the darkness, that's okay. Do it. 

Ha, just kidding! Eventually all our escapes will fall out.

Because there is no escaping.

And no hope.

Off with our heads.

Let the green claim us.

The Green Knight and Inherited Narrative

I have a bit of a pet peeve with adaptations. You will almost never find me liking them, particularly ones that attempt to adapt Christian works. So yes, that means I think the LOTR movies are hot freaking garbage, not to mention the new Chronicles of Narnia. I find the points and ethos are completely missing, which is something I demand from an adaptation. How this ties into my roleplaying game Crescendo will be tangential, but important.

So recently I finished Tolkien's adaptation of The Green Knight, and I find myself scratching my head. Folks tell me this is a very difficult story to understand. It's really not. See, there's this funny little thing at the very beginning of the poem:

It is When the siege and the assault had ceased at Troy,

and the fortress fell in flame to firebrands and ashes,

the traitor who the contrivance of treason there fashioned

was tried for his treachery, the most true upon earth—

it was Æneas the noble and his renowned kindred

who then laid under them lands, and lords became

of well-nigh all the wealth in the Western Isles.

When royal Romulus to Rome his road had taken,

in great pomp and pride he peopled it first,

and named it with his own name that yet now it bears;

Tirius went to Tuscany and towns founded,

Langaberde in Lombardy uplifted halls,

and far over the French flood Felix Brutus

on many a broad bank and brae Britain established

full fair,

where strange things, strife and sadness,

at whiles in the land did fare,

and each other grief and gladness

oft fast have followed there.

It is an acknowledged fact that pre-modern civilizations believed in a universal history. It is, to the best of my knowledge, a universal idea that we have no inkling of, and therefore scoff at. When folks of differing civilizations met up they compared gods to figure out if they were worshipping the same gods. Names and slight differences in portfolios did not perturb them one bit, as everyone acknowledged that the beings they were talking about were beyond them and if they could learn something new from each other they did. The greatest case that most moderns will accept? Rome's almost whole-sale co-opting of the Greek gods and hell, just Greek culture in general. But the one that we've been taught doesn't exist is Christianity's adoption of practically every mythological framework they've come acrost, assuming the state did not interfere with their efforts. 

Far from cutting out Greco-Roman and Norse mythology Christianity integrated it, forming a fusion. That was normal for the pre-modern world. 

"Nathan, where are you going with this?" You may ask.

Well, I'll tell you.

Turns out comic  book nerds were right: it's all the same story. Pre-moderns assumed their stories fit inside the mythological framework they'd already been given, contradictions and all. So the Green Knight is a sequel to the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid. It is not a stand-alone story, and was never assumed to be by the anonymous author. By spending two chapters/sections talking about Troy, the founding of Rome and Britain, the author is referencing a specific set of stories and themes.

Paris, with the help of Aphrodite, falls for and steals away Helen, who is then compelled to stay with Paris. The Achaens/Greeks gives chase. Noble Troy, who refuse to abandon their own no matter the consequences, refuse to abandon Paris. They pay for their loyalty with a ten year-long siege and the destruction of their city.

Odysseus, after being waylaid by a goddess for nine years, finally gets back home, only to find that that in his absence his home has been taken over. Helped by his son and Athena, the goddess of wisdom, Odysseus finally gets rid of the suitors and gets to have sex with his wife Penelope again. It's an all-day affair. Everyone lives happily ever after.

I've not yet finished the Aeneid, but the Aeneas and Dido come to mind, with Eros forcing Dido to fall in love with Aeneas, the two of them getting married... and then Aeneas being told to leave. 'Cause destiny. 

Did we mention that the Greek gods suck? Do we need to?

So, that's the backdrop. And it gives a lot of  context. Gawain is tested in a matter similar to Paris. Trying to find the Green Chapel Gawain asks for the help of the Virgin Mary... and then immediately finds a castle, with a lord who claims that the Green Chapel is just two miles away! Take a load off! Rest!

Oh, BTWS, Morgan Le Fay is here. This is her castle, pretty much. And the lord is the Green Knight. And he sends his wife to tempt Sir Gawain. Without the backdrop of Homer and Virgil it's a toss-up as to why they're doing this. But with that backdrop? Man, it's obvious. They're trying to find a weakness in Camelot to overthrow it. Morgan Le Fay is attempting to recreate the tragedy of Troy; she's trying to turn Gawain into another Paris, Odysseus, and Aeneas. 

But Sir Gawain is prevented from falling to this trap by the Virgin Mary, explicitly. Rather than having a woman trying to drag him down, Sir Gawain is bolstered by the Blessed Mother, and he is able to pass the test that would have led to the destruction of Camelot.

But even then, divinely aided, Sir Gawain cannot bypass the fear of death. He can only go so far. But would that we all failed as splendidly as Sir Gawain! Would that was the only thing we really had to contend with! The world would be a far better place for it.  The context of Homer and Virgil changes the very meaning of the text.

And now we get to Crescendo. 

One of Crescendo's tenets has been to try and bring the principles from older, pre-modern storytelling into an RPG. Every time I've done a more mythological type game it has benefited me and my players. There's a wholesomeness, a vitality to using the mythological method that I've just not seen before. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight really cemented how much I still have to learn, not to mention how much still needs to be encoded into Crescendo.

One avenue I'm beginning to explore is the role of the GM. One of the things I have in the game already is that the GM sets up a myth that he then builds the culture of his setting into. I'd already intuited that I wanted that done, although I couldn't have told you why at the beginning. I've also always been leery of the idea that the GM is over the other players. I do like the idea of their being a locus point for the story, for someone to be director to the actors/writers that are the other players. But the GM is frequently not a player, but someone who is expected to manage the situation and the game itself.

So what if we recast the the GM into The Archivist, the one who takes the Heroic Player's Beliefs, Traits, and Impulses and contextualizes it? And, by contextualizing it, challenges the the Heroic Player? Like, at that point the Archivist would be the one to interpret the data that is the setting and set that interpretation before the other players. The Archivist does not know everything about the setting, only how to get answers about it. So I suppose at this point I'd be setting up the Archivist to be able to generate histories (and the tomes to find more information in), not to mention sub-mythologies and cultures, very quickly.

Because we're all in a larger story. And the Archivist shouldn't have to just pull things out whole-cloth.

And that's before we get into the question of whether or not there should be a metacurrency for the Archivist.

More as I have it.