Skip to main content

The Abominable Snowman




One of the joys of BBC I Player is the 'film category' where all kinds of material pop forth that you would not necessarily go in search of. One form of this is the occasional 'Hammer' film from that fertile factory of the fantastic. Today it was 'The Abominable Snowman' with the wonderful Peter Cushing.

One of the great features of popular culture is that it can explore ideas that if baldly stated in the 'mainstream' factory of idea production (what is rooted in what is currently perceived to be the case) would probably not get a look in and yet enclosed in the comforting word 'fantasy' can be happily explored.

In this case, Cushing is a botanist on an expedition to the Himalayas staying at a Buddhist monastery. So far, so innocent, but he harbors a belief in the existence of the 'Abominable snowman' or yeti and aims to link up with an American expedition that is seeking it. This aim neither accords with the monks nor with Cushing's wife (though for different reasons).

The American expedition appears and Cushing, allaying his wife's fears and dissembling with the monks, sets off with them into immediate conflict. Cushing is a scientist who wants to confirm the yeti's existence, the expedition wants to capture one, ostensibly to further human curiosity but as a reflection of a fundamentally commercial mindset.

Meanwhile, the dissembling is moot because the lamas have the power of telepathy and know that what will unfold will do so according to the quality of the consciousness of the participants.

In the end, the yeti (who do exist) thwart both aspirations - of the commercial expedition by (restrained) violence through exacerbating the desires of their pursuers to the point where they fold under their own harmfulness (of derangement, fear, or greed) and of the scientist by persuading him of their higher moral purpose. A persuasion that is only possible because of the inherent receptivity of the scientist and the quality of his conscience.

In this latter case, they, a third branch of evolution, have taken shelter in the Himalayas curious of what humanity will make of itself (and the verdict is out) such that if they fail, they may be able to step in and take the objectives of the creation forward, humanity having failed (cue references to the prospect of nuclear annihilation and ecological degradation - the film was made in 1957). The yeti are portrayed as superior beings (guarded in their existence by the monks) and we are meant to consider, as the film unfolds, both their implicit criticism of our daily existence and the hope that, despite what we do or fail to do, an evolutionary impulse towards a greater reality will continue. The responsibility of any and every conscious being is caring the world into a greater fullness of being, fail that responsibility, and life will find a new path forward.

All of this is wrapped in the coating of a 'standard' melodrama, replete with anguished wives, necessarily devious lamas, avalanches, and suspenseful glimpses of the yeti (who only fully appear when they transfer their thoughts and secure their secrecy with Cushing's scientist). Yet it is only a film factory produced 'horror' film...


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Red Shambala

Nicholas Roerich is oft depicted as a spiritual seeker, peace visionary, author of numberless paintings, and a brave explorer of Central Asia. However, Andrei Znamenski in his 'Red Shambala: Magic, Prophecy, and Geopolitics in the Heart of Asia' has him perform another role - that of geopolitical schemer. The scheming did have at its heart a religious vision - of a coalition of Buddhist races in Central Asia that would establish a budding utopia - the Shambala of the title - from which the truths of Buddhism (and co-operative labour) would flow around the globe. This would require the usurpation of the 13th Dalai Lama to be replaced by the Panchen Lama guided by the heroic saviour (Roerich) who appears above dressed for the part. In the achievement of these aims, the Roerichs (including his wife, Helena, who had a visionary connection with 'Mahatmas' whose cryptic messaging guided their steps) were willing to entertain strange bedfellows that at one time include...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Buddha meets Christ in embrace

Reading Lama Anagarika Govinda is proving nostalgic on a number of fronts. I recall my first reading of it in my first year at university, bought at Watkins, the famous 'esoteric' bookshop in Cecil Court in London. I sat in my hall of residence room transfixed by a world made familiar; and, it was deepening of a commitment to contemplation (which has been observed fitfully)! I remember returning, at the time, to my school to give a talk to the combined fifth form on Buddhism and using Govinda as the backbone of my delivery (both this book, and his equally wonderful, the Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism). I was voted (I immodestly remember) their best invited speaker of the year. I had even bought a recording of Tibetan music as opener and closer! He reminded me of how important Buddhism was (and is) to my own thinking and comprehension of my experience. The Buddha's First Sermon in the Deer Park was the first religious text I read (of my own volition) at the tender age...
13 comments
Read more

The Jewel in the Crown

I spent six months in Nizhny Novgorod ostensibly as both the chair and the director of a micro-finance fund. I must confess much of that work -apart from the spectacular resignation of my predecessor as director - has faded from view but what I vividly recall is at weekends progressing through Paul Scott's 'The Raj Quartet' and subsequently re-watching its painstaking and triumphant dramatization (by Granada) that I had watched, long before, on the television. It was without doubt my most deeply cherished reading experience to date. This extraordinary narrative of the British in the last, declining days of colonial rule that begins with the doomed relationship of Hari Kumar and Daphne Manners, her rape, and the injustice of Kumar as accused by Ronald Merrick, the Police Superintendent, and one of the most malevolent characters ever created in fiction. He is a magnified alter ego of Scott himself especially the sharply, destructively repressed homosexuality. The narrati...
Post a Comment
Read more