Gnosticism and the Postmodern Paradigm
As the postmodern, liberal zeitgeist is underway, I find it interesting how so many films have inverted the traditional mindset. It is no surprise that most mainstream directors today hold an atheistic worldview. What is interesting to notice is the subtle, subliminal programming that occurs with films. The programming I am referring to is the inversion of reality into anti-reality, logic into anti-logic.
Upon scrutiny, what the viewer can actually notice is the promulgated myth of Gnosticism, as it applies to the liberal and postmodern paradigm. In order to understand this, we should first understand what Christianity, and its inverse—Gnosticism, are.
In Christianity, the story goes as follows: God created the Earth, with man and woman in it. As God is wholly good, his Creation was also wholly good. Lucifer, one of God's angels, opposed God, and during the War of Heaven, banished him—referring to him then as Satan—and his angels down to Earth, away from the gates of Heaven. Satan, masquerading under the guise of a serpent, tempted Eve to bite from the apple, granting Adam and Eve knowledge. From here, sin was born, and subsequently all of the foibles attributed to Earth are the result of this event. Satan, in Christianity, is the facilitator of the decay found in the temporal plane. The dichotomy here is that God exists in the realm of the spiritual, and Satan exists in the realm of physical. Ultimately, God, seeing Satan's influence, then incarnates as Jesus Christ, showing His creation the path towards salvation.
Christianity is the sphere of traditionalism, or objective truth. If we were to reduce Christianity to one word, it would be love. This notion of love as a divine emotion is what enables externalities to coalesce and bring that which is in the periphery into the center. We can refer to love as the unifying feature within its foundation, providing it with structure. This emotion is what gives integrity to its adherents. A contemporary model of this traditional and unifying force was seen within Protestantism, where the idea of a hard work ethic as a virtuous ideal led to capitalism, industriousness, and rapid civilizational advance in the form of technology.
Gnosticism, by contrast, inverts these principles. The Gnostic belief divided God into two beings—the highest, unknowable good God (the father), and the evil creator God (demiurge, also meaning creator in Greek). Gnostics saw the world as the product of evil, and therefore they viewed the temporal as a prison, from which the created must escape. Man contains the spirit, which he must free in order to be reunited with God the Father. Here, Lucifer is seen as the messenger from God the Father. He entered the paradise of the demiurge, disguised as a serpent, and granted the first man and woman knowledge from the fruit, which revealed to them that their ostensible paradise was in fact a prison, which the demiurge used for his entertainment. Later, Lucifer incarnated into Christ, providing the message of liberation from the material world and away from God the Creator.
Gnosticism's inversion of the traditional principles of good and bad fosters the overgrowth of liberal ideas, perfectly encapsulated in postmodernist thought. We can view Gnosticism as religious liberalism. The idea of individualism, the pursuit of experience, the notion that those on top are bad and those below are good, are subliminally depicted principles in the film medium.
The Truman Show can be viewed within the framework of Gnostic religion. The world Truman lives in is a paradise created by Christof (evil demiurge). Truman lives in a state of complete ignorance relative to the true state of the world outside him and Christof does not want him to acquire knowledge of the real truth. One day a spotlight with the inscription "Sirius" falls near Truman. Sirius is a star identified by the Gnostics with Lucifer carrying the light. The spotlight is the source of this light. In this way, the fall of the spotlight refers to the fall of Lucifer. After some time, Sylvia informs Truman that the world in which he lives is not real. Depending on the Gnostic teaching, Sylvia can symbolize Sophia, the spiritual Eve or the Serpent-Lucifer, penetrated into Paradise. After Truman learns about his deception, his goal is to resist the demiurge and exit from the world he created.
When individualism and the freedom for self-expression espoused in postmodernism is the highest goal in life, there is no way to provide cohesion for what is in the periphery. Without a unifying force, the parts which can compose the whole begin to decay, leading to dissolution. If everything is subjective, and there is no absolute truth, then ".... all who wander are lost," leading to the proliferating state of endlessly deranging narcissism at the forefront today.