Collie's Bestiary

I'm in San Francisco, the City by the Bay, for the Women's Spirituality Intensive Week — which actually goes from Saturday to the following Sunday thereafter. It's going to be an 11 night stay, including all the extra retreats, welcome dinners, and caucus demonstrations. The actual classwork is indeed extremely intense, and my brain is not up to sounding academic just now… heck, I'm deliberately rambling here, as a means to clear my head. Thus the title: mental snapshots of what I'm seeing and experiencing here.

The hotel is… kitschy. There is no other word for it: the lobby and my room are both incredibly, cutely kitschy. The lobby has several of those big, white plastic, molded chairs, carefully designed so you cannot find a comfortable way to sit. There's one of those white plastic, half-sphere chairs that's completely lined in bright, lipstick red cushions; and the hanging lantern consists of myriad little red-glowing globes, like a cluster of grapes that decided to arrange themselves strictly on the x-y axis. As well, in my room all the lamps have the round-molded white plastic stands, and one of the chairs is the little pedestal type — the kind with a small seat and almost no back support. There are two decorative mirrors in there as well, with a segment from a Stratego board in one, and a piece of the Clue game-board in the other. Everything is very 60's: I wouldn't want to live in it long-term, but it is cute to visit.

I walk about four blocks down Mission every morning to class, and back again at night. It's August in San Francisco, though — it's not dark when classes end, so I don't feel worried. I'm as fascinated as a child sometimes by what I see, although I don't tend to let it show on my face. I see, flashing randomly through memory…

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Alas, it gets worse. The narrator rambles on in the same demagogic vein about the "mutant albino" crocodiles, ending with a close-up shot of one of the small white reptiles staring bemusedly back at us from where it floats in the water, behind glass. Herzog continues with his inflammatory nonsense, wondering aloud: "When" the albinos are in Chauvet (he offers no explanation of how that will occur, of course, or how cold-blooded reptiles will survive a normal French winter), what will they think of the paintings?

I am so aghast at this nonsense appended to a movie supposedly about something so beautiful and real that, upon the second viewing of the movie, I am careful to copy down this gobbledygook as precisely as I can — because it's so breathtakingly moronic that no one will believe me, I'm sure, and I want to have my facts straight. Herzog babbles pointlessly on with faux platitudes: "Nothing is real; nothing is certain. Is this an imaginary mirror? Are we nothing but albino crocodiles looking into the abyss of time when we look at the paintings?"

The film closes with a sloppy "negative" hand print done in red, where the artist lays her hand on the wall, then sprays red paint around it to leave a clear silhouette. It looks much like some of the ones in Chauvet, although as I stare bemusedly at it — while the credits roll and we suffer through yet more droning violincello — I find myself wondering if this is as poorly rendered as it is due to being painted just for the movie.

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Closer in to the camera crew on the walkway we see swells of stone that half-shelter the pregnant mare's niche. Painted on one is a herd of sturdy bison warily watching an even closer bulge of rock covered with a pride of lions. Interestingly, most of the animals painted are at side view, but there are a very few full-face wisent or aurochs depicted, looking back over their shoulders at the viewer. Here is the sole moment where the 3D, I feel, comes into its own: you can actually get a good sense of distance and motion as the camera's eye leads you in through the curving swells of the cave walls, ever deeper, until you reach that final wary little mare.

It is here, too, that I have that spine-tingling sense of sudden revelation — that world-bending instant in your head when you have an idea so marvelous, so new to you, that you must share its potential — even if you are not sure of its factuality! Staring mesmerized at the 3D depictions on-screen, it hits me where I have seen this before: the cave itself shapes the curves of hills and valleys, as seen by an observer standing safely one hillside distant. The paintings are a rendition of the wildlife — both real and desired — which could be found in that area, painted as if it were shifting through time like prehistoric time-lapse photography!

Looking close up at the painted stone in one spot, we can see a swarm of small mammoths with curiously poodle-like puffs about each ankle; perhaps the result of summer shedding? Oddly larger — perhaps closer to the painter's present-day? — is an entire pride of lions in the same area. Near the pride, and standing nearer than they would in actuality, are many rhinos and a series of shaggy bull heads. Do the curving horns of the several different species perhaps all speak to the same symbolic meaning in the prehistoric painter?

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It is at this point that the absurd scene (mentioned previously) with the spear thrower occurs. Interestingly, nothing at all is said about the greater importance of gathering or scavenging for the survival of our prehistoric ancestors; the narrator mentions only finding spearheads in the shoulder blades of horses and aurochs. The (highly faulty) impression you are left with is that prehistoric "man" survived on meat alone, and only hunters brought in food. Indeed, the filmmakers seemed quite thrilled over "man the hunter," referring to this mythical entity as "very aggressive, also strong and powerful." I can't help but wonder if this metaphorical single-gender version of humanity is a sort of sacred icon to them.

Apparently March to mid-April is set aside for scientific teams to enter the caves. After that Herzog and his crew are allowed one week, with four hours daily. As we're given that information, we see first a shot of the beautiful horse herd. The artwork is so amazing to me, right down to the careful charcoal shading to suggest three dimensions… and then there's a close-up of Herzog looking excited as he tells us about the artwork of the "minotaur" and the woman. I had to laugh again at that. Consider: we have astonishing and provocative artwork of the only human figure in the caves — a woman! -who is flanked by a lion(ess?) and a wisent. I found myself delightedly wondering: could this be an ancient goddess — maybe the first in Old Europe? What might we learn from her? Also, why are those two animals in particular flanking her; what wonderful concepts might they signify?

And yet… what does Herzog "see"? With alchemical alacrity, he somehow mentally transmutes the head and shoulders of a wisent into a Greek minotaur: a bull-headed man. Apparently to him that naturally de-emphasizes the woman, since of course the important figure is the mythic male. Still, at least that explains a little of the gender assumptions within the film: they literally cannot see any alternative. I find myself bemused, however: how can people who wear cultural or self-imposed blinders consider themselves objective? Maybe they cannot see the blinders either? More importantly, at least to me: what personal or cultural blinders do we all wear? I want to remove mine, but I have to 'see' them in order to do so. How does one go about learning to 'see' like that?

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From the discussion of the little bone flute, we then shift to an outside shot with Wulf Hein, an "experimental archaeologist" who is wearing a fur suit of reindeer skin which he made himself, in order to try to experience how folks lived and used tools back then. I was a bit confused to see he had the fur on the outside, though — wouldn't it be warmer with the fur turned inward to trap body heat? He also discussed flutes, producing a little instrument he'd made from a vulture radius bone which he said was naturally pentatonic — and then playing the "Star Spangled Banner" on it! From there things just got weirder: we're introduced to a perfumier named Maurice Maurin, who talks about how sealed prehistoric caves develop a different scent than one finds outdoors, so he's wandering around outdoors on the mountain, sniffing for caves.

Talking later to the friend who attended the movie with me, I was quite wroth at this part of the film — why was Herzog wasting our time with this crap when he could be showing us more of the cave paintings?! He'd been given an unprecedented four hours for seven days in the cave to film! Even if we assumed half of those 28 hours were lost in futzing around with gear and trudging around in the caves… and that another half of the remaining 14 hours of filming was of unusable poor quality — that's still eight hours we could have of the gorgeous prehistoric paintings! He could have made a stunningly beautiful film out of that — so what was he doing with all that time?!

My companion agreed stream-of-consciousness was really awful for this particular subject, but argued convincingly that the perfumier with the strange eyes could have been a much better part of the movie had Herzog simply categorized more effectively within his film. A section on how people were searching for more such caves, and the interestingly varied techniques they were attempting, would have added to the film's impact, he thought. I could agree to that… if only Herzog had done so. Ah, well.

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Also shown during the tour was a wall with a series of red rhinos with, underneath them, "positive" handprints (i.e. you paint your palm, then press it to the wall, just like near the original cave opening) and a partial circle of nine red dots. There was a niche nearby with torch swipes on the rocks there as well, with carbon 'crumbs' under them which had been dated to about 28,000 years old.

Next Baffier pointed out the artwork which she said proved the prehistoric lions were the maneless sort. There were two line-drawings of the dorsal half of two lions with no manes, one overlapping the other. This art has been dated to about 30,000 years old — it's the included photo next to this paragraph. The taller and larger of the two lions is about 6' long, and Baffier pointed out the "scrotal bump" which she said proved that particular lion was male. Since the other is smaller, she added, this showed it was a female.

However, I had two issues with these assertions. First, if you look closely, it appears the "female" has a bump in the same location. So does that mean the artwork is of two lions and you simply can't tell their gender, or does it mean Baffier has no idea what she's talking about — or both? Maneless lions are not common, but even today some still exist — and unlike maned lions (where all the adult males eventually head off alone), maneless brothers will sometimes remain friends, stick together, and hunt together. Further, if Baffier is going to sex animals as male by the presence of possible squiggles to denote gender, then shouldn't that logically infer that she should also assume all the many animals without such squiggles are all female?

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When I say Herzog is excessively artsy in the film, I wish I were just joking. At one point in the film he's standing there and talking about a silence in the cave which is so profound they can perhaps hear their hearts beat. He asks everyone to fall silent and simply listen. Initially it's rather lovely: you start hearing the faint, erratic dripping of distant water; and then a very soft rhythm which could be a heartbeat. Then, just as I was wondering delightedly if we really were hearing the sound-man's heartbeat… it increased in volume, and violincello music started playing. It was doubtless well played, but I found the music rather mournful, dreary, and used way too often and too heavily. Frankly, I think Herzog would have done better to dispense with the dragging music and the wordless vocal choruses — how often can they sing, "Aa-aah!" without it becoming numbing? — and just let us hear what was actually in the cave! That was what the movie was supposed to be about, right?!

Sorry… occasionally my exasperation gets the better of me. Anyway! At this point the movie jumped once more out of the cave, and off for more interviews with various scientists.

Basic data

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The entire cave system is more than 1300 ft. long, and as mentioned earlier the original cave opening was a walk-in. Interestingly, deep in one of the first chambers at the former entrance — where the sunlight would never illuminate — there is a vertical wall covered with red dots, created by placing the painted palm of the hand against the wall. These were all created by the same person, and I find myself wondering what significance the painter attributed to this signed, dark entryway.

Irritating anachronistic assumptions

The movie's modern gender assumptions rapidly become incredibly, numbingly tiresome, to the extent that I asked a friend of mine to see the movie with me the second time I went. I wanted to find out if someone else — someone, in fact, who thinks I'm too "sensitive" about such issues — would notice it as well. Amusingly, despite my not having mentioned it to him, he told me afterward that the constant, inaccurate assumptions regarding gender were overstated and a detriment to the movie's possible quality. I was both surprised and pleased to hear that!

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A film by Werner Herzog.

From the little I know of Werner Herzog, he's a famous cinematographer renowned for his stream-of-consciousness art films. The impression I get from the article or two I read about him was that he struggles to portray the sometimes-insanity of life as realistically as possible in his films. If this is indeed the case, he has sort of succeeded with his most recent movie, Cave of Forgotten Dreams: a film which depicts a slice of life which is at once sublime and ridiculous, full of Herzog's sound and fury — which drifts into insignificance next to the awe and silent beauty of the paintings he is supposedly highlighting, but on which he spends far too little time.

I suppose this was my greatest frustration with the film, in fact: Herzog had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go into the caves at Chauvet, to film the ancient, unique, irreplaceable, priceless cave paintings there. From what I read, the French government has locked the caves up tightly since their discovery in 1994, in an attempt to keep the paintings pristine — a reasonable-sounding precaution considering the tragedy of the destructive mold spores in some of the other prehistoric caves discovered, such as Lascaux. However, this means only selected scientists and members of the French government may enter the caves. Herzog apparently had contacts within the French government, and so they agreed to hired him for the duration of the time he'd be allowed into the caves — for the princely salary of one Euro. :-)

Let us not forget: these are paintings created by our prehistoric ancestors, the oldest we have yet discovered and over twice as old as the next most ancient cave paintings we are aware of — over 30 thousand years old! The mind boggles when trying to encompass that length of time, and when reflecting upon what our ancestors might have been trying to communicate through these amazing — and likely sacred to them — works of art. So you might think, given such a priceless gift to bring out to the world, that Herzog might spend the lion's share of time within his film in slowly and carefully panning over the paintings themselves, right?

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"A free race cannot be born of slave mothers." –Margaret Sanger

My thesis was written on the Central Asian nomads of the late Bronze and early Iron Age. Since these were mounted nomadic traders and raiders, the modern assumption has been that they were a strongly patriarchal society. One of the "startling" discoveries which I discussed in my thesis was the realization that a weapon in the grave goods did not automatically equate to it being a man in the grave. This "discovery" of warrior women, of course, was hotly contested for some time — "women don't fight!" -until osteological testing revealed these were indeed women of power buried with weapons and rich grave goods.

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived, and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive and realistic." –John F. Kennedy

Amusingly, this revelation is happening again. Now it's the supposedly violent and patriarchal Vikings who're being slowly revealed as both more egalitarian than we'd originally suspected, and having numerous women warriors:

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