Families bequeathe their most valuable possessions to subsequent generations to preserve legacy. In HBO’s fact-based dramatization “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” based on the book by Rebecca Skloot, an item as dear as gold is gifted to the world and bypasses the offspring. The story focuses on what’s medically known as the HeLa cell […]
Archives for April 2017
Archetypes: Television: Review: Feminine Archetypes in ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’ (2017)
April 22, 2017 by
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘Girls’: Moon, Venus and the Feminine (2017)
April 17, 2017 by
Unlike Athena, who emerged fully formed out of Zeus’s thigh, the quartet of “Girls” – chronologically young women but called by a more immature younger-female appellation – spent six seasons finding themselves. And the show’s creatrix, Lena Dunham, used the dyad signifying the archetypal Feminine – Moon and Venus – as their strategy for self-discovery. […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Colossal’ (2017)
April 7, 2017 by
The word “colossal” evokes massive Greek statues that adorned the ports of ancient islands, a tacit and imposing warning to ensure that visitors with bad intentions turn their ships around. Colossal, written and directed by Nacho Vigalondo, is a bit like that. Except, instead of these big artful structures keeping people out, it’s about people […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Graduation’ (2017)
April 6, 2017 by
Graduation, written and directed by Cristian Mungiu, is an incisive exploration of expansion – educational and travel-based – through archetypal Jupiter. The humans caught up in this dyad are Romeo Aldea (Adrian Titieni), a respected physician in a small town, whose daughter Eliza (Maria Dragus) is about to graduate from high school. She’s a good […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘Big Little Lies” and the World of Neptune (2017)
April 6, 2017 by
As the waves relentlessly crash onto the shoreline of Monterey, you anticipate the emergence, any minute now, of bearded Neptune, sporting his trident as though waiting to pierce some high-end seafood and olives. “Big Little Lies,” HBO’s seven-episode drama based on Liane Moriarty’s novel and directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, is about a murder tied to […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘The Americans’ and the Lotus (2017)
April 5, 2017 by
Like “The Americans”’ Elizabeth (Keri Russell) and Philip (Matthew Rhys), the lotus is not what it seems. The flower – an Eastern representation of the female, specifically her genitalia – is externally magnificent, with no clue that it grows in the mud, anchored by earth. The title of Season 5’s “Lotus 1-2-3” refers to the […]
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