Don't Ya Hate Always being Right?

I have already remarked that I am like the Rock Star bloke in Jurassic Park, and that was indeed his line when the T-Rex jumped the fence, and by coincidence the reason was the same as here, ie the things of which Friedrich Nietzsche "spake" in "Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None" ARE the key to this movie.

Honest Injun, when I wrote the rest of this blog I never knew the Strauss-Nietzsche-Zarathustra connection, but it looks like, even without that knowledge, my analysis was in fact fairly spot on, eg see what Nietzsche calls "eternal recurrence" and I had said "circle of existence".

Here is some Google:

"This concept first occurred to Nietzsche while he was walking in Switzerland through the woods along the lake of Silvaplana (close to Surlej); he was inspired by the sight of a gigantic, towering, pyramidal rock. Before Zarathustra, Nietzsche had mentioned the concept in the fourth book of The Gay Science (e.g., sect. 341); this was the first public proclamation of the notion by him. Apart from its salient presence in Zarathustra, it is also echoed throughout Nietzsche's work. At any rate, it is by Zarathustra's transfiguration that he embraces eternity, that he at last ascertains "the supreme will to power"."

Now before you start jumping out of closets dear kiddies, The Gay Science has nothing to do with those light in the loafers.  So GoogleEarth shows us the very "rock" which inspired Nietzsche, per:

Google also says:

"Thus Spoke Zarathustra was conceived while Nietzsche was writing The Gay Science; he made a small note, reading "6,000 feet beyond man and time," as evidence of this. More specifically, this note related to the concept of the eternal recurrence, which is, by Nietzsche's admission, the central idea of Zarathustra; this idea occurred to him by a "pyramidal block of stone" on the shores of Lake Silvaplana in the Upper Engadine, a high alpine region whose valley floor is at 6,000 ft." 

So I don't think ANYONE can be in doubt about the Monolith inspiration/juxtaposition in this movie.

Well GoogleEarth says lake [right beside St Moritz] is 5,878 feet and and this "pyramid" is at 9,729 feet, so if we translate the German from 1882 to modern day American, Nietzsche was saying "if you throw your IPod and BluRay in the river, get off yer arse, stop being a pussy obsessed with closets and do some travel to such places then you TOO may get inspired".

If you think that is a bit nasty, well "you ain't seen nothin yet" as this Nietzsche is a total badass, and to understand where this movie is coming from with HAL and all, you need to understand Kurtz when he said "Horror, horror has a face and you must make a friend of horror or it will truly become your enemy".

Fortunately, to save you a lot of Googling,  John Cleese in making A Fish Called Wanda created the "All American Bullet Headed Saxon Mother's Son" [to quote John Lennon] ex CIA weapons man called Otto, and Otto was a great fan of Nietzsche.  So here is a video highlight of Otto in action, a short and a longer version.

 

The most hilarious Cleese Classic Moment here is the interpretation of Nietzsche's words by Wanda where the expression "You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape", comes out as this:

Otto:  "Apes don't read philosophy"

Wanda:  "Yes they do Otto, they simply don't understand it"

The main concept mentioned above for Zarathustra's "Frodo like quest" was:

"The will to power is the fundamental component of human nature. Everything we do is an expression of the will to power. The will to power is a psychological analysis of all human action and is accentuated by self-overcoming and self-enhancement. Contrasted with living for procreation, pleasure, or happiness, the will to power is the summary of all man's struggle against his surrounding environment as well as his reason for living in it".

So please read Nietzsche yourself or take Otto's word for it, but either way it seems this movie is based entirely on the "sprech" of Nietzsche via his boy Zarathustra - no explanation needed.

Over to you.