Symbol Watcher

“What is it about bats?” I wondered as I sat fixed on “The Dark Knight” last Saturday. Even though I know most bats are not the fang wielding blood suckers most of us have learned to fear from watching Dracula movies, they’re still creepy. There’s something prehistoric and other worldly about them. After all, they hang upside down and live in the darkest, dankest places.

There was “the Bat man” flying through the air and flashing across the screen to save innocent victims and slay psychopathic criminals with equal venom. Still, I kept thinking: Bats aren’t the kind of creatures that instill a feeling of safety and security, so why would someone who wants to help save the world choose a bat as his crime fighting persona?

As I started researching the characteristics and symbolism of bats, I realized that a bat is very appropriate for this character’s dual nature of misunderstood vigilante outcast and life-saving hero. For starters, bats have a unique dual nature simply by the fact that they are the only winged mammal capable of extended flight (unlike a flying squirrel for instance, which only glides for short distances).

While I was well acquainted with darker bat symbolism (Vampires morphing into bats
and the Devil as fallen angel with wings) I did not know that several myths and cultures revere bats.

In classic antiquity, bats symbolized vigilance and a bat’s eye was believed to offer protection from the darkness. Mayan culture worshipped a bat-like god, Z’otz. Ancient China thought of bats as carriers of good fortune and some parts of Africa consider bats to be very intelligent since, they believe, bats don’t collide with anything while in flight.

From what I’ve learned about the varied symbolism of bats — sources of sorrow or strength depending on our cultural and religious beliefs — it seems appropriate that the Dark Knight is a bat.

In the movie, I saw how Batman’s actions and circumstances made him loved by many but also feared and ostracised — not just by criminals, but by the public he was trying to protect. He takes the fall for another character’s murder spree to keep the character’s hero reputation in tact. The movie closes with Commissioner Gordon explaining why Batman is willing to carry the weight of being unjustly accused. ‘He’s not a hero, he’s a guardian. . . . We’ll chase him because we need to and he’ll let us because he can take it.’ (Please forgive the rough paraphrasing.)

So Batman gets a public opinion crucifixion for something he didn’t do, but he’s self-sacrificing enough to withstand the criticism because he knows maintaining the public’s fragile faith in good means they have to keep believing in their already-appointed hero. It’s no wonder that in classic antiquity people would nail bats to their doors to protect against night demons and black magic.

–Writeye

July 23rd, 2008 | Tags: bat symbolism, Batman, The Dark Knight movie | Category: Movies |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Leave a comment

Last weekend I saw Will Smith’s new movie “Hancock.” At first I thought I was watching just another fantasy superhero movie, but as the relationship between between Smith’s character (Hancock) and Charlize Theron’s character (Mary) unfolded, I realized I was watching an aborted “mystical” or “divine” marriage — a failed attempt to bring the archetypal masculine and feminine together as one.

Hancock and Mary are the last remaining god and goddess on Earth. They have been living here for hundreds of years, assigned by their creator to be each other’s eternal mate. Being godlike, they are immortal, possess superhuman strength and they can fly. It also seems, judging from the scene in which Mary and Hancock are fighting in the street, that Mary’s moods can affect the weather.

The problem their god gave to Hancock and Mary (and evidently to all celestial couples who came to Earth before them) is that whenever they are close to each other for any length of time they begin to loose their omnipotence. And if they are together long enough, they become mortal and can die from the same injuries and illnesses as the rest of us. The minute they pull away from each other, they regain their strength and power.

So Hancock and Mary have spent most of their time on Earth locked in a painful tug of war, on one level, wanting to unite but knowing that doing so will eventually bring their death.

The struggle the universe has given to Hancock and Mary is very similar to the struggle found in ancient texts. The mystical marriage described in these writings is not a uniting of flesh and bone, man and woman, but a uniting of masculine and feminine energy — either within our own individual psyche’s to achieve wholeness — or within our universe. This mystical marriage is often symbolized in historical/alchemical art as the uniting of the king and queen or the sun and moon. If the two sides of the marriage actually culminate into a new, blended third, then the union is often symbolized as a hermaphrodite.

The mystical marriage, in psychological or symbolic terms, is a lengthy and difficult process. There is much tension between these two opposing forces (as is the case with Hancock and Mary when they first reunite). Neither wants to give up their ego standpoint, if you will, yet they are inexplicably drawn together.

If the coupling continues to advance toward a true divine union, the two sides must deflate their individual hubris and come to an important realization: one is necessary for the existence of the other. For instance, the masculine sun tells the feminine moon she needs his light to be seen. In turn, the moon tells the sun that he would be of no use if he didn’t have her to shed his light on. In the movie, we see this type of tender recognition of the other’s contribution when we learn that Hancock has saved Mary’s life many times and when Mary tells an amnesia-stricken Hancock the origins of his godliness.

The mystic marriage is a new and unique life energy; the male and female parts as they were previously known will die. The goal is the union, bringing the masculine and feminine together to create a whole that did not exist before.

And it is at this crucial point in the divine marriage process that Hancock and Mary fail. At the movie’s climax, they are right on the brink of this death before new life. Hancock is being attacked and Mary feels each pain of his injuries. They are becoming a new “one.”

But, instead of dying and letting the spirit of god (wholeness) enter into them, they take every last bit of energy they have to pull away from one another.

That same predicament we see described in the ancient texts, is the same predicament Mary and Hancock’s god presented to them: If you want to experience profound love and the light of knowing, you will have to sacrifice yourself as you are. Remember that Mary tells Hancock that all the god and goddess pairs are drawn together so they can know love.

But the movie doesn’t have a hermaphroditic conclusion. In the end, Hancock remains the omnipotent earth hero and Mary a superhuman suburban earth mother. They could not trade their one-sided existence for the greater gift of remaining in the love and knowing of the other.

Of course, each character’s self-induced separation did not extinguish their longing for the masculine or feminine side of the other. It’s obvious in the movie’s closing scene: Mary remains joined to her mortal husband (played by Jason Bateman) in a kind of secondary, surrogate union, while Hancock is drawn to writing messages on the feminine moon.

For more information on mystic marriages, I suggest Marie-Louise Von Franz’s Alchemy An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology.

–Writeye

July 10th, 2008 | Tags: "Hancock" the movie, divine marriage, mystical marriage | Category: Jungian Psychology, Movies |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (4)