Greatest movie-epic I’ve seen since APOCALYPSE NOW. But more
to the point and urgent; more relevant, not just to Boobus
Americanus Summum Ignoramus, but to me. Literally a modified
version — small-town community with sheriff and deliberate
faith rather than tribe with “natural faith,” chief and
shaman — of the anarcho-primitivism that Jensen, Zerzan
and others are writing about, and just as unattainable,
I think, unfortunately, so long as “things are as they
are” (but I noticed the Mexican owl’s “blue guitar,”
the electric one).

After 32 years and seven re-watchings of the Doors
documentary, WHEN YOU’RE STRANGE — also narrated
by Johnny Depp — in the past two weeks, I
understand my preternatural fascination with
them, in particular, Morrison: The Lizard King.

To mis-quote Don Corleone when he confided to
Tom that he finally figured out that it was
not Tattaglia who killed Sonny and shot him
and tried to force him into an early
retirement, but Barzini: “Tattalia’s a
pimp (and Morrison just a rock-n-roller,
albeit a shrewed one; his looks and
crooner’s voice didn’t hurt any either)!
He could never have out-fought Sonny.
But until this night I didn’t know…
that it was THE LIZARD all along.”

Whether Morrison was conscious of his
intent to “Break on through to the other
side” to meet the Lizard or the film-makers
deliberately chose a lizard as their hero
isn’t important. Language doesn’t work
that way, as Barbara taught me. Language
explains “who we are” via myths and
legends, such as Morrison followed
and ultimately became, and Rango
followed and ultimately became: human.

Maybe this odd “hobby/habit” of
studying computer programs and manuals
isn’t as half-baked as I’d recently
concluded. Machines, networks, and
the “languages” with which “we” control
them are, like anything else made by
humans, based on human understanding
of humanity and the (relatively)
timeless worlds it replaced with
its short-lived, in fact moribund,
“civilization.” I was dead wrong
about the “ugliness” of digital
animation. The only truly ugly
image I saw in that movie was that
of the City “blooming” in the
dessert by killing it via the
“old water con.” What is
“ugliness,” usually, but
something unnatural, something
that’s not supposed to be there?
Like a tumor bulging through an
old cat’s eye?

I suppose one could call the town
of Dirt “civilization.” But not
as we have come to term. The very
name “Dirt” implies that this
town/tumor is benign. Not a natural
part of the dessert, but small,
harmless, destined to live out its
life and return to dirt, leaving
behind minimal damage to the desert.
But The City (what was it supposed to
be, Tucson? Phoenix? Or just another
of the “metaphors” the old armadillo
speaks of?) is Civilization incarnate,
or rather not incarnate, because we see
no bodies or anything else living except
the obviously imported grass on the golf
course. Just steel, glass and stone towers
sucking all life from the desert not merely
to “survive,” but keep it’s country club golf
grass growing according to regulation. The
City tumor is most certainly malign, like that
first mutation that settled in Sumaria (and
China? or one immitated the other?) a mere
six-thousand years ago, if even that, and
metastasized the engulf the planet, eliminating
tribal cultures that had existed in the
Americas, Africa, Europe, everywhere,
relatively unmolested, except by rival
tribes, for tens of thousands of years.
A nice touch, in the movie, to show a
glimpse of the abandoned mud “city” the
Anastazi — or whatever tribe it was –
left behind; it was created of the
materials of the immediate environment,
and returned, albeit altered by the true
human mark, art, to its environment,
home to that environment’s native creatures.

But ultimately, our desires, needs, bodily functions are the
domain of the Lizard Brain (medulla?). As soon as Rango’s
tank falls off that hatchback and shatters his civilized
pretentions to art and theater evaporate like water in the
desert and his first “thought,” if verbalized, would be:
“thirsty!”

How brilliant that this metaphorical medulla is so
disoriented by civilization that he doesn’t know “who he
is.” This makes sense. I don’t think the Lizard Brain, or
whatever it’s “metaphysical” equivalent is has
consciousness, the way we cerebralists know it, or even an
unconscious. It just is. Like a lizard or any other living
thing just “is.” But like the kernel, the brain of the
operating systems we created, it controls all the
behind-the-scenes, and most essential, operations i.e.
heart-beat, breathing, incidental shit like that. The
kernel is the machine’s medulla; however, it can be
communicated with through signals. Programming languages,
even the most complex, like Lisp or Haskell or what-not, are
still created basically for human, cerebral recognition and
understanding. Beneath high-level languages are low-level
machine code, assembly language, and beneath that bits,
bytes, bats, whatever — the stuff the kernal understands.

There must be, there must have been, among less “civilized”
peoples a similar back-and-forth, via layers of “languages,”
or symbols recognized by the unconscious, etc. between
cerebral consciousness and the Lizard, not even a damned
primate, that runs the show. But the Lizard can’t keep the
heart beating without certain necessities like food, water,
etc. and I suppose it’s the cerebrum’s job to provide these
necessities via knowledge, imagination, cunning and all that
other oral-epic Odysseus stuff.

But our cerebrums are no longer wired for this crap.
There’s Rango in his tank, among fake fish, trees and other
lifeless things, such as the belly-up floater cockroach,
talking academic nonsense about “character development”
“role-playing,” “heros” and the necessity for conflict to
ignite a drama (all double-entendre, but who knew at the
time? except those back for a second viewing). Until the
tank is shattered on the road and he is forced into his own
story.

While he gets by, for a while, on wit, imagination, and
other cerebral linguistic pyrotechnics — i.e. lies; worse
than lies: falsification of the myths the townspeople of
Dirt, and Rango himself, have faith in — inevitably, he is
undone by — what kind of animal? — a snake. Rattle Snake
Jake, “from hell” or Eden. “Ride the snake/to the lake/the
ancient lake, baby” (where there’s water). Confronted by a
lizard (or whatever a snake is) who KNOWS WHO HE IS and
knows who Rango is not, language, imagination, ego evaporate
like the desert water and he again hears his own Lizard:
RUN!

But that’s only natural. The Lizard Brain (which may be the
medulla and/or the cerebellum; I honestly don’t know; this is
all just metaphor, the only thing we civilized cerebralists
understand) is pretty blunt in terms of basic survival commands:
fight, flee, eat, drink, sleep, shit, fuck (but only if the coast is
clear), etc. So it’s run, run, run away from your tribe and
your mate (Miss Beans, isn’t that her name?) to save your own ass. Very
lizard-like, I assume, but not human. All metaphor aside,
what makes us, or rather, what once made us human was the
relatively smooth works of the cerebral
programmer/administrator taking and sending messages to the
kernal and dedicating his single machine to something
larger; the network that is the tribe, not to mention
converting Lizard brain’s persistent nagging to get laid
into a “higher” love for Ms. Beans.

So, heeding old armadillo, not to mention The Doors, Rango
“breaks on through to the other side” to confront his own Lizard
(or Clint Eastwood; same thing).

But this is where poor Young Morrison fucked up. The shaman
breaks on through in order to bring back knowledge that will
help his tribe. He doesn’t just hang out there getting
smashed on cactus juice. The “Lizard” comes to him in a
vision — again, it can only be something the cerebral self
can understand or decode — of contemporary mythic hero,
Clint Eastwood. Shrewed and ironic on many levels, but
again, a vision familiar to his conscious self/ego/whatever
and spoken in his own language: “no man can escape his own
story” (love that line).

So Lizard brain’s command to change tactics from flee to
fight sinks in. All that’s missing is the inevitable
cerebral response: why? “Not for yourself but them” the
people of Dirt, says Clint, which helps, but doesn’t push
Rango over the edge to the pont where a man isn’t measured
by his words, which could be false, but his deeds. It is
only when he sees the water-main and the sprinkler-systems
of the golf courses and finally the monstrous city that is
the usurper and murderer of Dirt that it all “clicks:”
deep, timeless, unfathomable Lizard instinct combine with
cerebral recognition, analysis and conclusion to integrate
the fractions of Rango into a determined human being –
metaphorically — ready to play the often fatal role of
“hero” in order to save his tribe.

And then the plan — Odysseus always had a plan — which
leads to the flood, which washes away the civilization
sickness exemplified by the Mayor and his thugs, and Jake
the Snake carries said Mayor “to hell” and the sun is
shining and the water is bountiful but contained and
Rango/Noah, hand in hand with Miss Beans, calls for a “dip”
in the water — I knew there’d be some kind of
judeo/christian malarky sooner or later — and Dirt, freshly
watered, begins anew…

Shit that was a good movie…