• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

The Shark and The Black Bird

RobertU

DP Veteran
Joined
Jul 27, 2018
Messages
1,514
Reaction score
630
Location
Vacaville, CA
Gender
Male
Political Leaning
Other
I have experienced scores of meaningful coincidences (synchronicity) involving falcons, an icon of the Egyptian sun god Ra. Interest in falcons led me to The Maltese Falcon and a different memory of the story, in which the bird was broken, not just scratched. Suspecting I had seen a variation of the movie with a different ending, I recently purchased a DVD of a likely candidate: the 1975 film The Black Bird, a parody of The Maltese Falcon.

(Spoiler Alert) The movie starred George Segal as Sam Spade, Jr. and featured both old and new characters pursuing the bird, including Elisha Cook, reprising his role as Wilmer Cook; a mysterious Russian woman; and a Nazi dwarf with Hawaiian henchmen. In the movie, the black bird is neither scratched nor broken. Instead, the Hawaiians dumped the bird off a boat. As Spade tries to retrieve it from the ocean floor in a deep-sea diving suit, a great white shark swoops in, grabs the black bird in his jaws, and swims away.

This ending seemed to draw from Egyptian mythology. Ra travels in a boat, the Barque of Ra, from which he battles the sea demon Apep. In The Black Bird, Ra, personified as the falcon, falls from his boat, and is captured by Apep, portrayed by the shark. If I was an incarnation of Ra, did my intersection with this film mean I had lost my personal struggle with Evil? Or perhaps my spiritual journey, like the film, is just a farce.
 
A farce is a type of comedy that uses a combination of miscommunication, absurd plots, and strange situations to make you laugh.

One out of three ain't bad.
 
I have experienced scores of meaningful coincidences (synchronicity) involving falcons, an icon of the Egyptian sun god Ra. Interest in falcons led me to The Maltese Falcon and a different memory of the story, in which the bird was broken, not just scratched. Suspecting I had seen a variation of the movie with a different ending, I recently purchased a DVD of a likely candidate: the 1975 film The Black Bird, a parody of The Maltese Falcon.

(Spoiler Alert) The movie starred George Segal as Sam Spade, Jr. and featured both old and new characters pursuing the bird, including Elisha Cook, reprising his role as Wilmer Cook; a mysterious Russian woman; and a Nazi dwarf with Hawaiian henchmen. In the movie, the black bird is neither scratched nor broken. Instead, the Hawaiians dumped the bird off a boat. As Spade tries to retrieve it from the ocean floor in a deep-sea diving suit, a great white shark swoops in, grabs the black bird in his jaws, and swims away.

This ending seemed to draw from Egyptian mythology. Ra travels in a boat, the Barque of Ra, from which he battles the sea demon Apep. In The Black Bird, Ra, personified as the falcon, falls from his boat, and is captured by Apep, portrayed by the shark. If I was an incarnation of Ra, did my intersection with this film mean I had lost my personal struggle with Evil? Or perhaps my spiritual journey, like the film, is just a farce.
The meanings of your life - experience that you draw from the myths, the allegories, and the narratives of oral or written literature can be as intimate, personal and powerful as you choose to make them to become. That is why we should never make the mistake of minimizing or marginalizing the impact of fiction, poetry or drama on culture. Whether you choose to see this 'synchronicity' as planned or as happenstance, interpret it through a lens of ancient Egyptian god myths, or 1975 movie, or even trade the tale with others hoping they may grow to see the same significance as you do, and share a deep spiritual connection through the exchange, is what makes our brain differ from virtually every other animal on the planet.

All I can say for sure is that this is a unique capacity that Homo Sapiens seem to develop after the age of 12, drawing meaning from the abstract ideas and symbols of prior generations, and creating connections and patterns via some fluid thinking in the rostrolateral prefrontal cortex, makes oral and written literature happen in the first place, and its the same process is at work when you experience any of this as coincidences. Just because all this work in the prefrontal cortex that we exploit through oral and written literature, provides a competitive evolutionary benefit to our species in tribal organisations, and it is undoubtedly useful from a sociological level , does not mean any of it is actually real.
 
Let's remember the book was written by Dashiell Hammett. If you haven't read him, you're missing out: He's a lot of fun.
 
A more global interpretation of The Black Bird is that Ra represents world order and authority, which, In the Ukraine war, is challenged by the demonic forces of Apep. Can we snatch Ra from the jaws of Apep?
 
Back
Top Bottom