Posted:8 Aug 2010 12:11 +0100
<p><strong>While exposing my submarine skin to the churlish sunlight this afternoon, my mind wandered to wonderland, where it met Puss-in-Boots. Clad in his usual smartarse cat attire, he eyed me sardonically while I eyed him critically, cynically and finally downright cataclysmically.</strong></p><p><strong>Folklore will generally have it that intelligence is superior to violence or standard social norms, as in, he who is clever will succeed. But on closer inspection, are the protagonists of these tales truly intelligent, or is there a more sinister moral to these stories?</strong></p><p><strong>If we take, for example, the story of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Valiant_Little_Tailor">The Valiant Little Tailor</a>, what do we have really? Do we have a champion of intellect, an amazing entrepreneur, a dedicated scholar? Do we have a character that represents any of the standards Christian morality teaches us to nurture? Modesty, generosity, tolerance? The answer is, no. The tailor is nothing more than a cunning and very manipulative trickster; A master in the art of fooling others to do his bidding at incredibly little effort, his talents lie in lying and mind control. Everyone believes that<q>Seven at one Blow</q>, which he stitches proudly onto his belt, refers to seven men he killed in one blow, but in truth he is referring to flies he swatted while they mobbed his open jam sandwich. He tricks a giant into believing he has gargantuan strength by squeezing whey from cheese while the giant squeezes water from a rock and completes all the challenges posed by the king again through cunning trickery. Two giants are made to kill each other by the tailor throwing stones at them in succession from a tree and letting them believe they are hitting one another, for example, and as a result he ends up wedding the king's daughter and thus inheriting the kingdom.</strong></p><p><strong>But what folklore is teaching us here, is that it is not morals or conforming that pave the road to success, nor does it require extraordinary learning. All that is needed is self-confidence, a sharp wit as to assessing and abusing others lacking perception and an absolute absence of conscience. Manipulations of the truth and deception are what is required to succeed, in essence we are dealing with the description of a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopath"><span style="font-size: larger;">psychopath.</span></a></strong></p><p style="text-align: center;"><a target="_blank" href="http://media.photobucket.com/image/master%20and%20margarita/stareblade/behemoth.jpg?o=1"><img border="0" src="../img/behemoth.jpg" style="width: 198px; height: 290px;" alt=""></img></a></p><p><strong>So what of Puss-in-Boots? Puss takes this a whole step further. We are confronted with a naïve young man who finds success by listening to the advice of a psychopathic feline. I.e. we are dealing with a psychopath with zoomorphic <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder">dissociative identity disorder</a>, where the<q>guilt</q>is transferred to an animal who has to take responsibility for the protagonist's amoral behavior. Again, success is achieved by trickery and deception, with the miller's son finally attaining great wealth when his cat fools a magician into turning into a mouse and then eating him. The Satanic imagery is evident. Black cats symbolize black magic, and here the cat, i.e. the psychopathic aspect of the candid boy's persona, indulges in cannibalism. The ultimate prize is the king's daughter's hand in marriage, and the lesson the reader learns is that Machiavellian defiance of social and moral norms is a worthy course for those who wish to attain success and happiness, and these can only be achieved in life via anti-social egocentrism and extreme mental illness, or simply an alliance with Satan. Those of us who do not select that course, be it through choice or a deficit in the required talents, are left with a sickening neuroticism born of this set of paradoxical values. This is where hell becomes the others, the world a stage and life a laughing gas.</strong></p><p><span style="color: rgb(128, 0, 128);"><strong>Einstürzende Neubauten - Selbstportrait mit Kater (Selfportrait wit Tom Cat / Hangover)</strong></span></p><p><object width="425" height="344"><param value="http://www.youtube.com/v/CYt-7Um5OFs&hl=de_DE&fs=1?color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b" name="movie"></param><param value="true" name="allowFullScreen"></param><param value="always" name="allowscriptaccess"></param><embed width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="flash-selbstportrait"></embed></object></p>