I think the last time we got word of the Moronites was that they had just got settled into Tierra del Fuego. Where else were they spoken of?
Look to the West Volume VIII: The Bear and the Basilisk
- Thread starter Thande
- Start date
They were mentioned in Part 224 as one of the influences on Gnativism. They do seem quite obscure, though, given that Daniels and Woode are able to pass around two completely different descriptions of their marital practices.
EDIT: Or maybe they are both accurate. I could see the Moronites starting off with the two-marriages-per-person chain, and then adapting it to accommodate a gender imbalance by allowing people to become a third partner for someone in the middle of the chain. Perhaps this amended system came to dominate among the Moronites who ended up surviving the Pandoric Revolution, and Daniels was just avoiding anachronism by not mentioning it in her history of an earlier period.
Last edited:
Lycaon pictus
Donor
Since fleas can hide in clothing for hours at a time, the Massilians might actually be a little safer from the plague than others.
Thande
Donor
Thanks for the comments everyone.
Someone on the other forum had the accurate insight that I was author filibustering here (though not about the Methodists specifically).
I want to point out a few things in this news broadcast bit, because they're unintentionally revealing about ENA-influenced diversitarianism.
Note the station acronym: C-WNB News. "C" likely stands for "Carolina". Given the global-focus on the content, the "WNB" likely stands for "World News Broadcast" (or some variation thereof). "Carolina - World News Broadcasts" explicitly puts the national perspective first. Contrast this with CNN / CNN International, where the network's perspective + audience is *meant* to be "universal" even if in practice it's almost purely American, even ACELA corridor-y.
Next, there's this whole "minor diplomatic incident in the Guinean city of Dakar." Which plays very much like one of those amusing filler stories that runs on a slow news day. Except from an OTL perspective, it's super-technical, involves two nations unrelated to Carolina, and is... kinda boring. But! The people ITTL take amusement from it. So what are they laughing at?
Three issues are brought up. First, the French national anthem was poorly played by the official band. Second, the bilingual French commentary was provided in the Nouvelle-Orléanais dialect rather than Parisian French. Third, it's presented as a given that Dakar having been a French colony from 1677-1758 (1758!!!) means they should have some minimal appreciation for French culture.
All of that suggests a crazy-pants world.
The issue with properly accented French suggest that, if someone from Timeline L watched a Hollywood movie where most *every* foreigner is distinguished by speaking with a British accent, they would be beyond mortified. It would be as if they'd just watched a comedy movie where half the cast was in blackface, and then were told that nearly every comedy movie features blackface. (So I guess subtitles are simply what you do ITTL. Any foreigner will not only speak in their native tongue, but in the proper regional accent.)
That you could legitimately "score points" in an argument by noting that Dakar had been a French colony in 1758 (!) reinforces the idea that people ITTL are expected to be maximally aware of their own national history. So they'd likely look at primarily and secondary history education across the world in OTL and be horrified. Even something like the standard 7 or 8 point explanation for the factors contributing to the outbreak of World War I would seem underwhelming compared to what they must go through. "Bringing up the British and German naval arms race is all well and good," they might say, "but you just can't sweep away the intricacies of the First and Second Balkan Wars under the banner of 'some damn fool thing in the Balkans'! My God!"
So if the people ITTL ever came to OTL, and tried to pull off an equivalent research document to LTTW, it'd probably be two dozen times longer, with multiple apologetic footnotes from the field team for having to rely on "unauthorized" translations of dubious quality. Because to them, that'd be the bare minimum amount of complexity needed to grasp history.
I dunno; I think there's a difference between movies and diplomatic events. Also "dialect" is a bit more than accent. I wonder if a better analogy might be a TTL diplomatic reception which attempted to show respect for the Dutch ambassador by having commentary in Flemish.
I'd also note that the Carolinian newsreader calls it "the so-called 'insult'" which suggests that they're not sure what all the fuss is about either.
Hmmm....
Would such speeches consist mostly of the repeated word 'EXTERMINATE!'
?
Or Afrikaans?
I had to look this up. In various Slavic languages, Dalek means "far" or "distant".
dalek - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Volume V now on sale announcement!
Thande
Donor
Pleased to announce that Look to the West V: The Revenge To Dream Again is finally on sale!
Yes I know there's an error with the ENA flag on the cover, that was my fault for miscommunication. Now I know I've made it as a proper author. If anyone asks, the Great Racers were secret Patriot voters.
Yes I know there's an error with the ENA flag on the cover, that was my fault for miscommunication. Now I know I've made it as a proper author. If anyone asks, the Great Racers were secret Patriot voters.
287.2
Thande
Donor
From: “A History of Film” by David Grayson (1988)—
Today it’s a reasonably commonly-held belief, even among first-year film students, that Societist filmmaking has always been as it is today; heavily censored and ring-fenced by ideology, yet usually not too explicit in that ideology, short on character development and long on complex action scenes and rather sappy, often shoehorned-in love stories. When students first begin to learn, they overcome this initial misconception, but replace it with a different kind of wrong – which, is to say, they progress in their education. The typical assumption early in a film student’s studies is that, rather, Societist filmmaking changed dramatically since the beginning, but that it falls neatly into three main eras. Indeed, one will see this claimed repeated even in supposedly reputable textbooks which fall victim to sacrificing accuracy on the altar of a simple narrative. These three supposed eras, none of which any actual Societist amigo or amiga would recognise(!) are usually called, firstly, the Experimental or Alfaran Period. This stretches from the invention of film to the death of Alfarus and the Konkursum ad Kultura, which had a severe effect on the arts in the Combine in general.
Some older people in the free world will remember the Societist films of the second alleged era, the Moralizdiko Period, which resulted from the purges of the Konkursum ad Kultura. These were stereotypically very dull and worthy, resembling the French, Russian and American films of a generation before,[9] heavy on droning on about doctrinaire Societism, often pausing a scene for a tangential diatribe about the Nationalistically Blinded Enemy Without (and, paranoidly hinted, Within). Conventional thinkers usually associate these dreary pieces of the filmmaker’s art with the idea that all the talented and experimental Societist filmmakers of the first era had all been purged or fled into exile, leaving the dull-headed but ideologically pure footsoldiers in their wake. According to this analysis, the Moralizdiko Period reached its peak (or trough) in the 1950s.
From the 1960s onwards, even as the Combine itself shifted from expansion to stagnation and decline, the third era came to life, the Ledus or Visdosus Period. This is the one we are still living in today, and the form of Societist film (from the Combine, that is) which is readily recognisable. In reaction against the forgettable, ideology-heavy wastes of xyloid of the Moralizdiko Period, the Ledus era featured a new generation of filmmakers. Less experimental than their purged grandfathers’ generation, they were nonetheless here to have fun and entertain the masses, not prove their loyalty to a paranoid undercover member of the Okuli. Restrained from being too daring with how they depicted their ‘perfect human’ characters, the Ledan filmmakers instead turned to epic scenery, impressive special effects using new technology, grand action scenes. Natural disasters were (and are) particularly common as settings for Societist action films, being a potential trigger for exciting scenes of violence that could not be attributed to portraying conflict between humans. Rather than stopping a scene for a dull verbal diatribe about ideology, the Ledans stop them in order to have an incongruous but enlivening song and dance number with complex choreography – particularly popular in love stories. Though often feeling rather shallow, modern Societist films remain popular enough in the free world that even Novgorod has given up trying to ban them.
So much for the standard narrative of Societist filmmaking; our first year film student completes his exams and moves on to second year, wondering what else there is to learn on this topic – surely he now knows it all? How naïve he is! Like all narratives of this type, the three eras notion is at best a crass oversimplification, and at worst an outright lie. Let us peel back another layer and draw nearer to the reality.
Real art does not fall into neat temporal categories so easily. It is, of course, true that the Konkursum ad Kultura had a drastic effect on all Combine Societist art, and then was followed by a backlash against its restrictive and paranoid doctrinaire values. But there were plenty of dull Societist propaganda films of the 1910s and 1920s that, other than being monochrome and silent, would fit easily into the Moralizdiko period. Indeed, accounts by outsiders from the free world who were familiar with the films of ‘the new Meridian regime’ (as they naïvely thought of it) often describe them in these terms, and equate their ideological rambling as comparable to the worthy political biopics of America or France and Russia’s religious morality tales. As always, the danger for any student of art is to think of the best-remembered and most-celebrated pieces of an age first, and mistakenly assume they are representative of the whole. Often the very reason why they are remembered and celebrated (now – not necessarily at the time) is precisely because they did not fit the contemporary pattern, and excited and distracted audiences at the time with their controversy.
There are many examples of the three-eras model not holding up to scrutiny; perhaps the most celebrated is that of Navis Estela, which began as a film series before also moving on to motoscopy. Originally created during the 1950s, in an age which was supposedly that of the restrictive Moralizdiko, Navis Estela cheerfully circumvented all censorship by setting itself in the future, when Earth had been united by the Societists, and star-ships were now exploring the universe and encountering other races of beings. The films sparked an ideological debate over whether it was morally acceptable or not to depict exciting scenes of conflict between the united humans and these hypothetical ultratellurians, especially when (due to limitations in makeup at the time) they were clearly played by human actors with prosthetics. Ultimately, Navis Estela helped bring down the overweening censorship of the Moralizdiko period by breaking the consensus among the ruling class (many of whom enjoyed the films as well). Of course, it was far from the only piece of art in the period to lead to the backlash against the Konkursum ad Kultura.
However, let’s instead focus on that first supposed era, the era of film when Alfarus ruled with an iron grip in the 1910s and 1920s. Students learning about this era (or the simplified version emphasising a few classics over the crowd!) are often surprised to learn that early Societist filmmaking was associated with experimentalism, in contrast to how conventional the ‘filmed plays’ of most nations (other than California) were at the time.[10] However, a moment’s thought should explain why this was the case. All other art forms had existed for years, often hundreds or thousands of years, before the Final Revolution. Societism was fundamentally based on the Tower of Babel philosophy that all humans had once shared a single culture, and that all modern expressions of culture represented degraded forms that had metallaxised [mutated] from that original perfect state. The Final Society, it was argued, should try to reconstruct the original culture – just as linguistics had reconstructed lost languages – by the comparative method, finding links between disparate cultures and emphasising these. For example, Sanchez himself had noted the parallel that the Chinese had a table of noble ranks which he equated with that of Europe.[11]
In the early Combine, therefore, there was an appointed class of scholars (who eventually became associated with the Biblioteka Mundial) concerned with trying to use these comparative methods to piece together what the Universal Human Culture should look like. Initially, this was frequently treated as a far-off, long-term project, much like the idea that Novalatina should in turn be replaced with Old Eurasian [i.e. Proto-Indo-European] when it had been sufficiently reconstructed. However, the push for cultural unification became more and more significant throughout the period of Alfarus’ rule, in part because its advocates had a tendency to get promoted and survive purges. Markus Lupus (MaKe Lopez) was a particularly strong advocate in Alfarus’ inner circle. Some areas, such as Human Music and Human Cuisine, still remained rather underdeveloped at the time of Alfarus’ death, suspected to be because Alfarus himself (and his wife) were fond of both the music and the cuisine the former UPSA had already had. Other areas, like Human Literature, Human Drama and Human Painting, saw much more work in the period, perhaps because Alfarus was less interested in those.
We can already see the divergence from the disinterested, academic pursuit to recapture some hypothetical unified human identity which Sanchez himself, and perhaps even Caraíbas and Jaimes, had envisioned. Under Alfarus, the quest for the Human Way was invariably, and inevitably, influenced by the personal beliefs of the scholars and their patrons, affected by power plays and currents of fashion. The most obvious and self-evident way in this took place was that when the scholars did publish final models for the Human Way on a particular subject, it often bore a suspicious resemblance in its core to the way the old Meridians had lived. Influences from other cultures were incorporated, and highlighted as supposedly preserving other traces of the ancestral Human Way, but always in a visibly tokenistic manner layered over the Meridian core. These smaller influences were usually drawn primarily from China (due to Lupus’ influence and China playing a big part in Sanchez’s ‘revelation’ of universality) and secondarily from the regions which the Societists currently ruled, such as central Africa and the East Indies. The situation was also confused by how the Societists of Alfarus’ period tended to promote comparisons to the Roman Empire (despite the latter’s history of war and violence) in connexion with the Novalatina language, something that would persist until a backlash against it under the Konkursum ad Kultura.
Other than Italy and Spain, the rest of Europe, by contrast, was usually dismissed as a ‘mere peninsula with delusions of grandeur’ and representing little of worth in connection with the alleged lost Universal Human Culture. This was clearly influenced by contemporary foreign policy, resentment of the French both ancestral and caused by the conflict with the IEF, dismissal of the ENA and therefore the British Isles that had spawned it, and a desire to appeal to peoples colonised by Europeans elsewhere in the world to turn to Societism. It may even have been an expression of ferdinandismo, Novamundine supremacism and contempt for the Old World. All in all, this brief rundown shows just how little the Societists’ censorship diktats had to do with any kind of truly disinterested appeal to reconstructing some Universal Human identity.
The point, for the film student, is that film was a brand new art form, developed (in a usable form) a few years after the Final Revolution and, perhaps, fundamentally associated with it (another non-local invention of the time, the quister, also became associated with Societist novelty). There was no decades- or centuries-old tradition of filmmaking in countries around the world to study and try, in theory, to plot back a unified ‘correct Human Filmmaking’ method from using the comparative method. This meant Societist filmmakers were essentially tasked with creating what Human Filmmaking should be, and as nobody could say what that was, this gave them an incongruous freedom to create. Hence the reputation of this period for experimentalism, even though (as said above) the majority of films made by Societists in this period were as dreary and worthy as those made in other parts of the world.
Nonetheless, that reputation exists for a reason. The early Societist film studios were mostly dotted around the former Buenos Aires Province, many based in the former eponymous city, Zon1Urb1, itself. However, as time went on, many began ambitiously filming on location, not only in other parts of South America, but in Africa, the East Indies, and other places under Societist sway or influence. These films were often far more interesting and exotic than the rather parochial ones of many countries (though Californian filmmakers often managed to have various parts of their diverse state double for any region of the world!) Even dry educational Societist films became sought after in film-odeons around the world for their depictions of exotic locations. Appealing to, say, an Italian audience, precisely because they saw the people of Java as so different from them and therefore interesting, was the sort of ideological contradiction that would have tied the later Combine in knots – but Alfarus and his men merely saw this as an opportunity to spread influence abroad. Some of these films were not just documentaries, but grandiloquent propaganda showing new lands and peoples gained for the Threefold Eye – compared, by some contemporary Societists as well as outsiders, to the old Roman Triumph. The difference was that the leaders who had, ahem, ‘subdued the revolt against Humanity in this Zone via a police action’ were not celebrated in the same way Roman generals had been – well, at least not officially or openly.
Reflecting the somewhat looser strictures of the period, these films typically did not shy away from openly depicting scenes of conflict between Celatores and locals, though these were often theatrically staged and censored in terms of violence just as they would have been in the nations. Possibly the most famous Societist film of that age, however, broke all the rules, both of filmmaking as seen elsewhere at the time, and of Societist censorship. Bonum Celator, “The Good Celator” – in earlier bootleg English versions, mistranslated as “The Happy Cavalier” – is the masterpiece of director Vinzendius Skopus (né Vincente Escobar). Ambitiously filmed in locations all over the Combine, from 1921 to 1923 and finally released in 1924, it was also the most expensive film ever made at the time. In many ways it is the ultimate progenitor of the ‘Societist Epic’ genre that influenced the Societist films we see today – which are louder, more ambitious and more superficially impressive, yet lack the depth and the heart of their founder.
The acting and filmmaking mastery at work in Bonum Celator sees it remain popular today, despite its apparent disadvantages; it is monochrome, lacks sound (a dubbed soundie version was made later, but received poorly) and suffers from the other limitations of the day. Nonetheless, Skopus’ directing and the performance by the lead actor, Karlus Viridus (né Carlos Verdura) elevates the film above the often wooden, starchy norms we associate with the usual film acting of this period. Viridus plays the adult Enrikus Zervus, depicted in flashback scenes by the child actor Ansharius Mardinus.[12] As many a critic has noted, Bonum Celator’s setting makes no logical sense from a chronological point of view; it depicts Enrikus fighting in the contemporary Societist conquests of Africa and the East Indies, yet implies the Combine has already existed for many years in the flashback scenes with his youthful self twenty years earlier. It remains debated whether this represents a deliberate artistic decision by Skopus to produce a hauntingly vague and timeless setting, the result of him complying with censorship orders in a piecemeal and disconnected manner, or simply the limitations of having to film the flashback scenes in the contemporary Combine.
The film opens with Enrikus fighting in Africa, then flashes back to his youth as a young boy living in an Equality of Necessity-provided basic home. He and his brother Pedrus live together with their mother, who is still grieving their deceased father but is heavily implied to be planning to remarry (another decision by the censors). The rebellious Enrikus and the more goody-two-shoes Pedrus do not get on, often getting into fights and being told off by their schoolmaster. The young Enrikus is shown committing seemingly harmless pranks in a masterfully-storyboarded montage, then going home happily to see his mother. Then the film backs up and shows us the outcomes of each prank, not just the beginning – the stone he threw to knock off a policeman’s helmet actually struck the man’s head and blinded him in one eye; he does not merely tease a cat but tortures it to death; a teacher is left permanently scarred by the glue trap Enrikus left to glue him to his chair.[13] The message, told with remarkable subtlety compared to most Societist or indeed non-Societist films of the period, is that rebellion against authority may seem harmless at first but rapidly turns to violence that ruins lives. And, indeed, when Enrikus’ mother comes home, she finds he has fought Pedrus in her absence and inflicted a possibly fatal blow on his brother, reduced to a comatose state. In floods of tears, his mother calls in the authorities.
In further flashbacks interspersed with the adult narrative, a Judikador’s court calls Enrikus an inherently damaged, violence-prone boy. He offers him a choice – exile to a distant penal island for life, or to join the Celatores, use his violent tendencies for the benefit of Humanity, and ultimately forfeit his life in the distant future. Enrikus chooses the latter, and now we know how he got here. The Africa arc of the film ends with the now repentant Enrikus losing a friend to Darfuri spears. Grieving, but telling himself he does not deserve friendship, Enrikus is posted to the other side of the world, to Java. The second arc features more scenes of action, and Enrikus and his men end up saving an attractive young Javanese princess, Anisa (played by ethnic Chinese, Peruvian-born actress Lucera Ramira). Initially rebellious, she falls in love with him as they have more adventures through the jungle, trying to seek the secured city of Batavia (Zon7Urb1).
Enrikus loses more of his men to Javanese attackers and they are trapped, managing to let Anisa escape and telling her to run. Instead of running alone, she gets help from a fresh group of Celatores led by a civilian official (heavily implied to have used death-luft on the Javanese). This sequence, which on paper could not have taken more than a few hours, is treated as a longer period in order to allow Anisa to have more dialogue with the official. He tells her of the Societist way, which Enrikus had only touched on, and she is both converted by his words and impressed by him personally.
Enrikus and his remaining men are saved. He is shocked to learn that the official is none other than his brother Pedrus, having recovered from the coma and entered this path thanks to the ‘meritocratic’ tests. This results in an agonising decision – he hears that Pedrus has convinced Anisa of the way of Sanchez, she is clearly half in love with him as well in a love triangle, and as a Celator, Enrikus is not permitted to have a family. He monologues to himself that Anisa would be cursed to bear his child regardless, tainted by the violent streak within him. Rather than force her to make a decision, he slips away and goes into the jungle to go out fighting against the Javanese, leaving Pedrus to marry Anisa in his absence. The film ends with the teary-eyed Anisa reading his final note to her and then collapsing into Pedrus’ arms, while Pedrus looks hauntingly off into the distant jungle. We get a final glimpse of a pair of eyes peering out from the trees, and a narration (via the interstitial subtitles) tells us that no-one knows if Enrikus lives or dies, but so long as the enemies of Humanity live, there will always be more like him, those who sacrifice their own lives and futures so that war can one day end.
Bonum Celator brilliantly captures the Alfarus-era exposition of Societism and irons out the apparent contradictions. It appeals to an audience on multiple levels, and despite its tragic depiction of Enrikus’ fate, reportedly resulted in a large increase in recruitment to the Celatores. Many Societist officials felt it was too daring and controversial, especially in its ‘glorifying’ depictions of battles, and tried to ban it; but this was an uphill battle, because Alfarus himself loved it. And indeed, Bonum Celator became not only one of the most popular films in film-odeons in Societist territory, but around the world. Most critics outside of the most paranoid believe it did not do a particularly good job of convincing foreign audiences of the alleged justice of the Societist way –but it did, at least, convince them that Societists could make good films...
[9] See Part #267 in Volume VII.
[10] This is a bit of a simplification, as there was plenty of experimental filmmaking elsewhere as well, such as England’s phanty-films (animation) described in the aforementioned Part #267.
[11] See Part #121 in Volume III. Note that the Societists’ methods here are not completely half-baked – in OTL linguists and archaeologists have tried to reconstruct the cultures of ancient peoples without written records, looking at common words in descendant languages of the Indo-European family, or symbolic representations in Chinese characters, for example. However, the Societists take it a wee bit far...
[12] Note the lack of a Spanish original name here, as Ansharius Mardinus was born after the shift to Novalatina names. In Spanish his name would be Oscar Martinez. For similar reasons (see next sentence) no Spanish original name is given for Enrikus Zervus, but it would be Enrique Cierva.
[13] The civil police in the Combine are technically still Celatores, but few people call them by that name because they are so obviously distinct from the “we are certainly not an army” militarised Celator force.
Today it’s a reasonably commonly-held belief, even among first-year film students, that Societist filmmaking has always been as it is today; heavily censored and ring-fenced by ideology, yet usually not too explicit in that ideology, short on character development and long on complex action scenes and rather sappy, often shoehorned-in love stories. When students first begin to learn, they overcome this initial misconception, but replace it with a different kind of wrong – which, is to say, they progress in their education. The typical assumption early in a film student’s studies is that, rather, Societist filmmaking changed dramatically since the beginning, but that it falls neatly into three main eras. Indeed, one will see this claimed repeated even in supposedly reputable textbooks which fall victim to sacrificing accuracy on the altar of a simple narrative. These three supposed eras, none of which any actual Societist amigo or amiga would recognise(!) are usually called, firstly, the Experimental or Alfaran Period. This stretches from the invention of film to the death of Alfarus and the Konkursum ad Kultura, which had a severe effect on the arts in the Combine in general.
Some older people in the free world will remember the Societist films of the second alleged era, the Moralizdiko Period, which resulted from the purges of the Konkursum ad Kultura. These were stereotypically very dull and worthy, resembling the French, Russian and American films of a generation before,[9] heavy on droning on about doctrinaire Societism, often pausing a scene for a tangential diatribe about the Nationalistically Blinded Enemy Without (and, paranoidly hinted, Within). Conventional thinkers usually associate these dreary pieces of the filmmaker’s art with the idea that all the talented and experimental Societist filmmakers of the first era had all been purged or fled into exile, leaving the dull-headed but ideologically pure footsoldiers in their wake. According to this analysis, the Moralizdiko Period reached its peak (or trough) in the 1950s.
From the 1960s onwards, even as the Combine itself shifted from expansion to stagnation and decline, the third era came to life, the Ledus or Visdosus Period. This is the one we are still living in today, and the form of Societist film (from the Combine, that is) which is readily recognisable. In reaction against the forgettable, ideology-heavy wastes of xyloid of the Moralizdiko Period, the Ledus era featured a new generation of filmmakers. Less experimental than their purged grandfathers’ generation, they were nonetheless here to have fun and entertain the masses, not prove their loyalty to a paranoid undercover member of the Okuli. Restrained from being too daring with how they depicted their ‘perfect human’ characters, the Ledan filmmakers instead turned to epic scenery, impressive special effects using new technology, grand action scenes. Natural disasters were (and are) particularly common as settings for Societist action films, being a potential trigger for exciting scenes of violence that could not be attributed to portraying conflict between humans. Rather than stopping a scene for a dull verbal diatribe about ideology, the Ledans stop them in order to have an incongruous but enlivening song and dance number with complex choreography – particularly popular in love stories. Though often feeling rather shallow, modern Societist films remain popular enough in the free world that even Novgorod has given up trying to ban them.
So much for the standard narrative of Societist filmmaking; our first year film student completes his exams and moves on to second year, wondering what else there is to learn on this topic – surely he now knows it all? How naïve he is! Like all narratives of this type, the three eras notion is at best a crass oversimplification, and at worst an outright lie. Let us peel back another layer and draw nearer to the reality.
Real art does not fall into neat temporal categories so easily. It is, of course, true that the Konkursum ad Kultura had a drastic effect on all Combine Societist art, and then was followed by a backlash against its restrictive and paranoid doctrinaire values. But there were plenty of dull Societist propaganda films of the 1910s and 1920s that, other than being monochrome and silent, would fit easily into the Moralizdiko period. Indeed, accounts by outsiders from the free world who were familiar with the films of ‘the new Meridian regime’ (as they naïvely thought of it) often describe them in these terms, and equate their ideological rambling as comparable to the worthy political biopics of America or France and Russia’s religious morality tales. As always, the danger for any student of art is to think of the best-remembered and most-celebrated pieces of an age first, and mistakenly assume they are representative of the whole. Often the very reason why they are remembered and celebrated (now – not necessarily at the time) is precisely because they did not fit the contemporary pattern, and excited and distracted audiences at the time with their controversy.
There are many examples of the three-eras model not holding up to scrutiny; perhaps the most celebrated is that of Navis Estela, which began as a film series before also moving on to motoscopy. Originally created during the 1950s, in an age which was supposedly that of the restrictive Moralizdiko, Navis Estela cheerfully circumvented all censorship by setting itself in the future, when Earth had been united by the Societists, and star-ships were now exploring the universe and encountering other races of beings. The films sparked an ideological debate over whether it was morally acceptable or not to depict exciting scenes of conflict between the united humans and these hypothetical ultratellurians, especially when (due to limitations in makeup at the time) they were clearly played by human actors with prosthetics. Ultimately, Navis Estela helped bring down the overweening censorship of the Moralizdiko period by breaking the consensus among the ruling class (many of whom enjoyed the films as well). Of course, it was far from the only piece of art in the period to lead to the backlash against the Konkursum ad Kultura.
However, let’s instead focus on that first supposed era, the era of film when Alfarus ruled with an iron grip in the 1910s and 1920s. Students learning about this era (or the simplified version emphasising a few classics over the crowd!) are often surprised to learn that early Societist filmmaking was associated with experimentalism, in contrast to how conventional the ‘filmed plays’ of most nations (other than California) were at the time.[10] However, a moment’s thought should explain why this was the case. All other art forms had existed for years, often hundreds or thousands of years, before the Final Revolution. Societism was fundamentally based on the Tower of Babel philosophy that all humans had once shared a single culture, and that all modern expressions of culture represented degraded forms that had metallaxised [mutated] from that original perfect state. The Final Society, it was argued, should try to reconstruct the original culture – just as linguistics had reconstructed lost languages – by the comparative method, finding links between disparate cultures and emphasising these. For example, Sanchez himself had noted the parallel that the Chinese had a table of noble ranks which he equated with that of Europe.[11]
In the early Combine, therefore, there was an appointed class of scholars (who eventually became associated with the Biblioteka Mundial) concerned with trying to use these comparative methods to piece together what the Universal Human Culture should look like. Initially, this was frequently treated as a far-off, long-term project, much like the idea that Novalatina should in turn be replaced with Old Eurasian [i.e. Proto-Indo-European] when it had been sufficiently reconstructed. However, the push for cultural unification became more and more significant throughout the period of Alfarus’ rule, in part because its advocates had a tendency to get promoted and survive purges. Markus Lupus (MaKe Lopez) was a particularly strong advocate in Alfarus’ inner circle. Some areas, such as Human Music and Human Cuisine, still remained rather underdeveloped at the time of Alfarus’ death, suspected to be because Alfarus himself (and his wife) were fond of both the music and the cuisine the former UPSA had already had. Other areas, like Human Literature, Human Drama and Human Painting, saw much more work in the period, perhaps because Alfarus was less interested in those.
We can already see the divergence from the disinterested, academic pursuit to recapture some hypothetical unified human identity which Sanchez himself, and perhaps even Caraíbas and Jaimes, had envisioned. Under Alfarus, the quest for the Human Way was invariably, and inevitably, influenced by the personal beliefs of the scholars and their patrons, affected by power plays and currents of fashion. The most obvious and self-evident way in this took place was that when the scholars did publish final models for the Human Way on a particular subject, it often bore a suspicious resemblance in its core to the way the old Meridians had lived. Influences from other cultures were incorporated, and highlighted as supposedly preserving other traces of the ancestral Human Way, but always in a visibly tokenistic manner layered over the Meridian core. These smaller influences were usually drawn primarily from China (due to Lupus’ influence and China playing a big part in Sanchez’s ‘revelation’ of universality) and secondarily from the regions which the Societists currently ruled, such as central Africa and the East Indies. The situation was also confused by how the Societists of Alfarus’ period tended to promote comparisons to the Roman Empire (despite the latter’s history of war and violence) in connexion with the Novalatina language, something that would persist until a backlash against it under the Konkursum ad Kultura.
Other than Italy and Spain, the rest of Europe, by contrast, was usually dismissed as a ‘mere peninsula with delusions of grandeur’ and representing little of worth in connection with the alleged lost Universal Human Culture. This was clearly influenced by contemporary foreign policy, resentment of the French both ancestral and caused by the conflict with the IEF, dismissal of the ENA and therefore the British Isles that had spawned it, and a desire to appeal to peoples colonised by Europeans elsewhere in the world to turn to Societism. It may even have been an expression of ferdinandismo, Novamundine supremacism and contempt for the Old World. All in all, this brief rundown shows just how little the Societists’ censorship diktats had to do with any kind of truly disinterested appeal to reconstructing some Universal Human identity.
The point, for the film student, is that film was a brand new art form, developed (in a usable form) a few years after the Final Revolution and, perhaps, fundamentally associated with it (another non-local invention of the time, the quister, also became associated with Societist novelty). There was no decades- or centuries-old tradition of filmmaking in countries around the world to study and try, in theory, to plot back a unified ‘correct Human Filmmaking’ method from using the comparative method. This meant Societist filmmakers were essentially tasked with creating what Human Filmmaking should be, and as nobody could say what that was, this gave them an incongruous freedom to create. Hence the reputation of this period for experimentalism, even though (as said above) the majority of films made by Societists in this period were as dreary and worthy as those made in other parts of the world.
Nonetheless, that reputation exists for a reason. The early Societist film studios were mostly dotted around the former Buenos Aires Province, many based in the former eponymous city, Zon1Urb1, itself. However, as time went on, many began ambitiously filming on location, not only in other parts of South America, but in Africa, the East Indies, and other places under Societist sway or influence. These films were often far more interesting and exotic than the rather parochial ones of many countries (though Californian filmmakers often managed to have various parts of their diverse state double for any region of the world!) Even dry educational Societist films became sought after in film-odeons around the world for their depictions of exotic locations. Appealing to, say, an Italian audience, precisely because they saw the people of Java as so different from them and therefore interesting, was the sort of ideological contradiction that would have tied the later Combine in knots – but Alfarus and his men merely saw this as an opportunity to spread influence abroad. Some of these films were not just documentaries, but grandiloquent propaganda showing new lands and peoples gained for the Threefold Eye – compared, by some contemporary Societists as well as outsiders, to the old Roman Triumph. The difference was that the leaders who had, ahem, ‘subdued the revolt against Humanity in this Zone via a police action’ were not celebrated in the same way Roman generals had been – well, at least not officially or openly.
Reflecting the somewhat looser strictures of the period, these films typically did not shy away from openly depicting scenes of conflict between Celatores and locals, though these were often theatrically staged and censored in terms of violence just as they would have been in the nations. Possibly the most famous Societist film of that age, however, broke all the rules, both of filmmaking as seen elsewhere at the time, and of Societist censorship. Bonum Celator, “The Good Celator” – in earlier bootleg English versions, mistranslated as “The Happy Cavalier” – is the masterpiece of director Vinzendius Skopus (né Vincente Escobar). Ambitiously filmed in locations all over the Combine, from 1921 to 1923 and finally released in 1924, it was also the most expensive film ever made at the time. In many ways it is the ultimate progenitor of the ‘Societist Epic’ genre that influenced the Societist films we see today – which are louder, more ambitious and more superficially impressive, yet lack the depth and the heart of their founder.
The acting and filmmaking mastery at work in Bonum Celator sees it remain popular today, despite its apparent disadvantages; it is monochrome, lacks sound (a dubbed soundie version was made later, but received poorly) and suffers from the other limitations of the day. Nonetheless, Skopus’ directing and the performance by the lead actor, Karlus Viridus (né Carlos Verdura) elevates the film above the often wooden, starchy norms we associate with the usual film acting of this period. Viridus plays the adult Enrikus Zervus, depicted in flashback scenes by the child actor Ansharius Mardinus.[12] As many a critic has noted, Bonum Celator’s setting makes no logical sense from a chronological point of view; it depicts Enrikus fighting in the contemporary Societist conquests of Africa and the East Indies, yet implies the Combine has already existed for many years in the flashback scenes with his youthful self twenty years earlier. It remains debated whether this represents a deliberate artistic decision by Skopus to produce a hauntingly vague and timeless setting, the result of him complying with censorship orders in a piecemeal and disconnected manner, or simply the limitations of having to film the flashback scenes in the contemporary Combine.
The film opens with Enrikus fighting in Africa, then flashes back to his youth as a young boy living in an Equality of Necessity-provided basic home. He and his brother Pedrus live together with their mother, who is still grieving their deceased father but is heavily implied to be planning to remarry (another decision by the censors). The rebellious Enrikus and the more goody-two-shoes Pedrus do not get on, often getting into fights and being told off by their schoolmaster. The young Enrikus is shown committing seemingly harmless pranks in a masterfully-storyboarded montage, then going home happily to see his mother. Then the film backs up and shows us the outcomes of each prank, not just the beginning – the stone he threw to knock off a policeman’s helmet actually struck the man’s head and blinded him in one eye; he does not merely tease a cat but tortures it to death; a teacher is left permanently scarred by the glue trap Enrikus left to glue him to his chair.[13] The message, told with remarkable subtlety compared to most Societist or indeed non-Societist films of the period, is that rebellion against authority may seem harmless at first but rapidly turns to violence that ruins lives. And, indeed, when Enrikus’ mother comes home, she finds he has fought Pedrus in her absence and inflicted a possibly fatal blow on his brother, reduced to a comatose state. In floods of tears, his mother calls in the authorities.
In further flashbacks interspersed with the adult narrative, a Judikador’s court calls Enrikus an inherently damaged, violence-prone boy. He offers him a choice – exile to a distant penal island for life, or to join the Celatores, use his violent tendencies for the benefit of Humanity, and ultimately forfeit his life in the distant future. Enrikus chooses the latter, and now we know how he got here. The Africa arc of the film ends with the now repentant Enrikus losing a friend to Darfuri spears. Grieving, but telling himself he does not deserve friendship, Enrikus is posted to the other side of the world, to Java. The second arc features more scenes of action, and Enrikus and his men end up saving an attractive young Javanese princess, Anisa (played by ethnic Chinese, Peruvian-born actress Lucera Ramira). Initially rebellious, she falls in love with him as they have more adventures through the jungle, trying to seek the secured city of Batavia (Zon7Urb1).
Enrikus loses more of his men to Javanese attackers and they are trapped, managing to let Anisa escape and telling her to run. Instead of running alone, she gets help from a fresh group of Celatores led by a civilian official (heavily implied to have used death-luft on the Javanese). This sequence, which on paper could not have taken more than a few hours, is treated as a longer period in order to allow Anisa to have more dialogue with the official. He tells her of the Societist way, which Enrikus had only touched on, and she is both converted by his words and impressed by him personally.
Enrikus and his remaining men are saved. He is shocked to learn that the official is none other than his brother Pedrus, having recovered from the coma and entered this path thanks to the ‘meritocratic’ tests. This results in an agonising decision – he hears that Pedrus has convinced Anisa of the way of Sanchez, she is clearly half in love with him as well in a love triangle, and as a Celator, Enrikus is not permitted to have a family. He monologues to himself that Anisa would be cursed to bear his child regardless, tainted by the violent streak within him. Rather than force her to make a decision, he slips away and goes into the jungle to go out fighting against the Javanese, leaving Pedrus to marry Anisa in his absence. The film ends with the teary-eyed Anisa reading his final note to her and then collapsing into Pedrus’ arms, while Pedrus looks hauntingly off into the distant jungle. We get a final glimpse of a pair of eyes peering out from the trees, and a narration (via the interstitial subtitles) tells us that no-one knows if Enrikus lives or dies, but so long as the enemies of Humanity live, there will always be more like him, those who sacrifice their own lives and futures so that war can one day end.
Bonum Celator brilliantly captures the Alfarus-era exposition of Societism and irons out the apparent contradictions. It appeals to an audience on multiple levels, and despite its tragic depiction of Enrikus’ fate, reportedly resulted in a large increase in recruitment to the Celatores. Many Societist officials felt it was too daring and controversial, especially in its ‘glorifying’ depictions of battles, and tried to ban it; but this was an uphill battle, because Alfarus himself loved it. And indeed, Bonum Celator became not only one of the most popular films in film-odeons in Societist territory, but around the world. Most critics outside of the most paranoid believe it did not do a particularly good job of convincing foreign audiences of the alleged justice of the Societist way –but it did, at least, convince them that Societists could make good films...
[9] See Part #267 in Volume VII.
[10] This is a bit of a simplification, as there was plenty of experimental filmmaking elsewhere as well, such as England’s phanty-films (animation) described in the aforementioned Part #267.
[11] See Part #121 in Volume III. Note that the Societists’ methods here are not completely half-baked – in OTL linguists and archaeologists have tried to reconstruct the cultures of ancient peoples without written records, looking at common words in descendant languages of the Indo-European family, or symbolic representations in Chinese characters, for example. However, the Societists take it a wee bit far...
[12] Note the lack of a Spanish original name here, as Ansharius Mardinus was born after the shift to Novalatina names. In Spanish his name would be Oscar Martinez. For similar reasons (see next sentence) no Spanish original name is given for Enrikus Zervus, but it would be Enrique Cierva.
[13] The civil police in the Combine are technically still Celatores, but few people call them by that name because they are so obviously distinct from the “we are certainly not an army” militarised Celator force.
Last edited:
Just when I thought I'd seen everything, here comes a Societist Star Trek. And the strangest thing is, I'd really be curious to watch it!
So the Combine invented an unholy combination of Bollywood and 80s action blockbusters...suddenly getting threshold-bombed into oblivion doesn't sound quite so bad.
Wait!!!! There still exists a Societist Combine??? I thought they were wiped out in nuclear fire?
The book is published in 1988 so it’s just before the Sunrise War.
The Sunrise War was in the sixties, you're thinking of the Last War of Supremacy
Hey, that was actually a pretty good movie-- admitting the limits of conformism, but pointing out there's a place where those uneasy in society are welcome. Even if inquiry on this line of thought is more muted in later eras I hope Societist storytelling can still play with the idea of an inner monster. I'd really like more of this, but it's going to be tough seeing all these interesting things and realizing it all ends up buried under a concrete anti-radiation cap later.
Once Spanish-original names fade out maybe there could be an Assyrian or Egyptian phase of naming as research on those civilizations improves. "Ah yes, I have four kids-- Adad-Nirari, Thutmose, Nebuchadnezzar, and little Hatshepsut."
Once Spanish-original names fade out maybe there could be an Assyrian or Egyptian phase of naming as research on those civilizations improves. "Ah yes, I have four kids-- Adad-Nirari, Thutmose, Nebuchadnezzar, and little Hatshepsut."
Egyptology is one of the fields they're behind in though, they'd be more likely to bring in Sumerian stuff
The Societist Star Trek kinda makes me wonder what kind of utopian futures are going to develop among in Diversitarian media.
La guerres des étoiles/Krieg der Sterne/Guerre stellari?
