13 thoughts on “History: Origin of the Hawaiian Flag”

1. Ken Conklin December 15, 2013 at 4:49 pm

   Thanks for that fascinating bit of history.

   In 2001, following the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, the Windward Ho’olaule’a was held in a parking lot next to Windward Mall. I saw a T-shirt in my size for sale with the slogan “Stand Strong, Stand Together” featuring side-by-side U.S. and Hawaiian flags. My sentiments exactly! So I bought it and have worn it to numerous political events since then. I’m guessing the shirt was made in Taiwan or Philippines, but the label has faded after 12 years of laundry.

   But the Hawaiian flag is incorrect. It has 9 stripes, with white on top and blue on the bottom. And NOBODY has even commented on the error — not even those who are politically active. I’ve made a fun little quiz out of it, telling people the Hawaiian flag is incorrect, and asking them if they can tell me what’s wrong with it. And even then nobody has been able to tell me what’s wrong with it! They cannot even tell me that it has the wrong number of stripes, let alone what colors should be on top and bottom. Occasionally a rogue will answer my question by telling me there are some bulges that shouldn’t be there. *LOL. So I guess that even knowledgeable, intelligent people simply don’t know exactly what the Hawaiian flag is supposed to look like. Readers, test yourselves: do you know what the colors are supposed to be for the top and bottom stripes?

   Reply ↓
   1. Ken Conklin December 15, 2013 at 5:26 pm

      I note that William De Witt Alexander is mentioned in the typescript about the origins of the flag. His testimony is the longest of all the testimonies in the Morgan Report, produced by the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs in January and February of 1894 — it was given during a period of four days and occupies pages 622-684 of the 808-page report. There’s a lot of interesting historical information about the Kingdom and the revolutions of 1887 and 1893. Alexander was native-born in Hawaii in 1833, spoke Hawaiian fluently, was chief surveyor for the Kingdom, and served on the Board of Education along with other important positions. See his testimony at

      http://morganreport.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=622-684#SWORN_STATEMENT_OF_WILLIAM_DE_WITT_ALEXANDER.

      Reply ↓
2. John Bruce December 15, 2013 at 9:58 pm

   According to Wikipedia a ninth stripe was intended at one time for the island of Nihoa.

   “A ninth stripe was once included, representing the island of Nihoa. Other versions of the flag have only seven stripes, probably representing the islands with the exception of Kahoolawe or Niihau. The color of the stripes, from the top down, follows the sequence: white, red, blue, white, red, blue, white, red. The colors were standardized in 1843, although other combinations have been seen and are occasionally still used.”

   You can’t outrun the intertubes!

   Reply ↓
3. inoaole December 16, 2013 at 9:23 am

   at the time of his appointment to secretary to W.F. Frear, Frear was an associate justice on the Hawai’i Supreme Court. Taylor’s appointment as chief of detectives may have coincided with Frear’s move from Chief Justice (since 1900) to Governor. the biography’s awkward narrative almost makes it seem that Frear had finished being governor when he was appointed to the organic act committee but being governor was still 9 years in the future

   Reply ↓
4. Constantinos S. Papacostas December 16, 2013 at 10:17 am

   In addition to the variations of the Hawaiian flag, there were several royal standards that bore some similarities with it. See Vol. 47 (2013) of the Hawaiian Journal of History.

   It may be that over the years, observers may have been confusing the royal standards with the Kingdom’s flag(s).

   Reply ↓
5. Kupuna-Kamea December 16, 2013 at 9:48 pm

   George C. Beckly 1760 -1787 was an English sea Captain in Hawaii who was commisioned by Kamehameha the Great. It is historicly established that he and Kamehameha I, designed the official flag of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Ironically the first Archavist of the Hawaiian Kingdom was a woman Judge named Emma (Metcalf) Beckly. These facts were established long before others cited above.

   Reply ↓
6. Kolea December 16, 2013 at 10:38 pm

   I had not previously heard reference to the East India Company flag. Is it generally known that the Hawaiian flag is almost identical to that flag?

   Here’s a link:

   http://www.google.com/imgres?imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fflagspot.net%2Fflags%2Fgb-eic.html&tbnid=vrvuhnIqADUjIM:&docid=yEDW5yTSQ-V4kM

   Reply ↓
   1. compare and decide December 17, 2013 at 12:33 am

      I had not previously heard reference to the East India Company flag. Is it generally known that the Hawaiian flag is almost identical to that flag?

      Yes, I was meaning to comment on that from the time this post was published.

      This British EIC flag is also the model for the first American flag.

      Here is the wiki on the various flags of the East India Company.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company#Flags

      The English East India Company flag changed over time. From the period of 1600 to the 1707 Acts of Union between England and Scotland the flag consisted of a St George’s cross in the canton and a number of alternating Red and White stripes. After 1707 the canton contained the original Union Flag consisting of a combined St George’s cross and a St Andrew’s cross. After the Acts of Union 1800 that joined Ireland with Great Britain to form the United Kingdom, the canton of the East India Company’s flag was altered accordingly to include the new Union Flag with the additional Saint Patrick’s Flag. There has been much debate and discussion regarding the number of stripes on the flag and the order of the stripes. Historical documents and paintings show many variations from 9 to 13 stripes, with some images showing the top stripe being red and others showing the top stripe being white.

      At the time of the American Revolution the East India Company flag was identical to the Grand Union Flag. Sir Charles Fawcett argued that the East India Company Flag inspired the Stars and Stripes.

      Here’s the first American flag.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Union_Flag

      To a certain extent, as colonies, the 13 British colonies in the Americas were kind of the equivalent of the British EIC (colonies pay no real taxes but are required to trade exclusively with the mother country). And to some extent that relationship continued after the ‘revolution’. The travel writer Bruce Chatwin (I forget which book) wrote that the profits that the British Empire accrued were largely invested in land development in the US (and in Argentina), especially in ranch land. The argument is that economically there was no severance between the two countries (just as politically the colonists were really just asserting their “traditional rights as Englishmen” during their rebellion, that it is basically the same form of government and political philosophy). I’ve heard that British corporations were the biggest private landholders in the US.

      Also, King Kamehameha had the biggest fleet in the Pacific Ocean, with over 1,000 ships of various types, and that the top commanders in this navy were former EIC naval commanders. (Perhaps modern parallel might be US special forces going to work for Blackwater, then going to serve in the military of emirates.)

      To what extent do some nation-states (e.g., modern India) derive from corporations like the British East India Company? (The idea of ‘India’ did not exist until it was invented by the British, south Asia was originally a collection of various states and societies.)

      Reply ↓
7. compare and decide January 16, 2014 at 1:07 am

   I almost forgot about the issue of the British East India Company and its relationship with the state.

   It’s important because the EIC is often cited as the first modern corporation. Given its charter by the British state, it was later absorbed by the British state when it was replaced in India by direct British rule (the Raj); the later creation of the Indian state is successful because the Indian state in turn absorbs the infrastructure of the British Raj.

   One parallel to the EIC is found in the first corporation in history, the Knights Templar, the religious order that served as an elite military force during the Crusades in the Holy Land. Here is a segment of a TV special on the Templars that elaborates their structure as the first multinational corporation.

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZq0lGd5yYE

   The wiki on the history of the Knights Templar helps to explain their success as a corporation.

   Donations to the Order were considerable. The King of Aragon, in the Iberian Peninsula, left large tracts of land to the order upon his death in the 1130s. New members to the Order were also required to swear vows of obedience, chastity, piety and poverty, and hand over all of their goods to the monastic brotherhood. This could include land, horses and any other items of material wealth, including labor from serfs, and any interest in any businesses.

   In 1139, even more power was conferred upon the Order by Pope Innocent II, who issued the papal bull, Omne Datum Optimum. It stated that the Knights Templar could pass freely through any border, owed no taxes, and were subject to no one’s authority except that of the Pope. It was a remarkable confirmation of the Templars and their mission, which may have been brought about by the Order’s patron, Bernard of Clairvaux, who had helped Pope Innocent in his own rise.

   The Order grew rapidly throughout Western Europe, with chapters appearing in France, England, and Scotland, and then spreading to Spain and Portugal.

   First, the Knights lived in poverty and gave their wealth to their own Order (at least temporarily). (In some respects this is reminiscent of Max Weber’s thesis of the relationship between the unique Protestant ethic of worldly engagement matched with extreme thriftiness, and its relation to the uniquely modern nature of capitalism, in which profits are plowed back into production; historically, merchants were not so frugal, and religions like Catholicism emphasized a withdrawal from a corrupt world, not that world’s purification. In this respect, the Templars were ahead of their time.)

   Second, the Knights went untaxed and unregulated and were borderless.

   The Templars subsequently became rather sophisticated bankers.

   hough initially an Order of poor monks, the official papal sanction made the Knights Templar a charity across Europe. Further resources came in when members joined the Order, as they had to take oaths of poverty, and therefore often donated large amounts of their original cash or property to the Order. Additional revenue came from business dealings. Since the monks themselves were sworn to poverty, but had the strength of a large and trusted international infrastructure behind them, nobles would occasionally use them as a kind of bank or power of attorney. If a noble wished to join the Crusades, this might entail an absence of years from their home. So some nobles would place all of their wealth and businesses under the control of Templars, to safeguard it for them until their return. The Order’s financial power became substantial, and the majority of the Order’s infrastructure was devoted not to combat, but to economic pursuits.

   By 1150, the Order’s original mission of guarding pilgrims had changed into a mission of guarding their valuables through an innovative way of issuing letters of credit, an early precursor of modern banking. Pilgrims would visit a Templar house in their home country, depositing their deeds and valuables. The Templars would then give them a letter which would describe their holdings. Modern scholars have stated that the letters were encrypted with a cipher alphabet based on a Maltese Cross; however there is some disagreement on this, and it is possible that the code system was introduced later, and not something used by the medieval Templars themselves.[5][6][7] While traveling, the pilgrims could present the letter to other Templars along the way, to “withdraw” funds from their accounts. This kept the pilgrims safe since they were not carrying valuables, and further increased the power of the Templars.

   The Knights’ involvement in banking grew over time into a new basis for money, as Templars became increasingly involved in banking activities. One indication of their powerful political connections is that the Templars’ involvement in usury did not lead to more controversy within the Order and the church at large. Officially the idea of lending money in return for interest was forbidden by the church, but the Order sidestepped this with clever loopholes, such as a stipulation that the Templars retained the rights to the production of mortgaged property. Or as one Templar researcher put it, “Since they weren’t allowed to charge interest, they charged rent instead.”[8]

   Their holdings were necessary to support their campaigns; in 1180, a Burgundian noble required 3 square kilometres of estate to support himself as a knight, and by 1260 this had risen to 15.6 km². The Order potentially supported up to 4,000 horses and pack animals at any given time, if provisions of the rule were followed; these horses had extremely high maintenance costs due to the heat in Outremer (Crusader states at the Eastern Mediterranean), and had high mortality rates due to both disease and the Turkish bowmen strategy of aiming at a knight’s horse rather than the knight himself. In addition, the high mortality rates of the knights in the East (regularly ninety percent in battle, not including wounded) resulted in extremely high campaign costs due to the need to recruit and train more knights. In 1244, at the battle of La Forbie, where only thirty-three of 300 knights survived, it is estimated the financial loss was equivalent to one-ninth of the entire Capetian yearly revenue.

   The Templars’ political connections and awareness of the essentially urban and commercial nature of the Outremer communities led the Order to a position of significant power, both in Europe and the Holy Land.[citation needed] They owned large tracts of land both in Europe and the Middle East, built churches and castles, bought farms and vineyards, were involved in manufacturing and import/export, had their own fleet of ships, and for a time even “owned” the entire island of Cyprus.

   Eventually, the Crusaders lost the Holy Lands, and the Templars lost their mission. They were already regarded with suspicion because they combined three functions: religious, military and commercial. (In the medieval mind, hybrids were looked upon as monstrous.) Moreover, kings and other religious order feared and envied them, especially the King of France. The Templars had long wanted to create their own country, in Cyprus or in France, which the King feared; moreover, the French king wanted to imbue himself with a holy aura in order to challenge the power of the Pope.

   King Philip had other reasons to mistrust the Templars, as the organization had declared its desire to form its own state, similar to how the Teutonic Knights had founded Prussia. The Templars’ preferred location for this was in the Languedoc of southeastern France, but they had also made a plan for the island of Cyprus. In 1306, the Templars had supported a coup on that island, which had forced King Henry II of Cyprus to abdicate his throne in favor of his brother, Amalric of Tyre. This probably made Philip particularly uneasy, since just a few years earlier he had inherited land in the region of Champagne, France, which was the Templars’ headquarters. The Templars were already a “state within a state”, were institutionally wealthy, paid no taxes, and had a large standing army which by papal decree could move freely through all European borders. However, this army no longer had a presence in the Holy Land, leaving it with no battlefield. These factors, plus the fact that Philip had inherited an impoverished kingdom from his father and was already deeply in debt to the Templars, were probably what led to his actions.[11][10] However, recent studies emphasize the political and religious motivations of the french king. It seems that, with the “discovery” and repression of the “Templars’ heresy,” the Capetian monarchy claimed for itself the mystic foundations of the papal theocracy. The Temple case was the last step of a process of appropriating these foundations, which had begun with the Franco-papal rift at the time of Boniface VIII. Being the ultimate defender of the Catholic faith, the Capetian king was invested with a Christlike function that put him above the pope : what was at stake in the Templars’ trial, then, was the establishment of a “royal theocracy”.

   So the French king persecuted the Templars on the grounds of heresy, and this ban spread throughout Europe. One question is the role that the escaping Templars played in the formation of modern Switzerland, which is contemporaneous.

   Even with the absorption of Templars into other Orders, there are still questions as to what became of all of the tens of thousands of Templars across Europe. There had been 15,000 “Templar Houses”, and an entire fleet of ships. Even in France where hundreds of Templars had been rounded up and arrested, this was only a small percentage of the estimated 3,000 Templars in the entire country. Also, the extensive archive of the Templars, with detailed records of all of their business holdings and financial transactions, was never found. By papal bull it was to have been transferred to the Hospitallers. Some scholars believe that some of the Templars fled into the Swiss Alps, as there are records of Swiss villagers around that time suddenly becoming very skilled military tacticians. An attack was led by Leopold I of Austria, who was attempting to take control of the St. Gotthard Pass with a force of 5,000 knights. His force was ambushed and destroyed by a group of about 1,500 Swiss peasants. Up until that point, the Swiss really had no military experience, but after that battle, the Swiss became renowned as seasoned fighters. Some folk tales from the period describe how there were “armed white knights” who came to help them in their battles.[8]

   At that point, the Swiss became among the best troops in Europe, as good as Germans (the Swiss Guard mercenaries still guard the popes), a rather unlikely development. Also, the Swiss eventually became the illustrious bankers they still are.

   Of course, not much is known of this period of history in Switzerland, but much is made of the Swiss flag, a white cross on a red field – the reverse of the Templar Cross. Of course, back then, everyone seemed to have a cross in their flags because they were Christians. But the background of the Swiss flag is murky, according to its wiki.

   The ultimate origin of the white cross is attributed by three competing legends: To the Theban Legion, to the Reichssturmfahne (Imperial War Banner) attested from the 12th century, and to the Arma Christi that were especially venerated in the three forest cantons, and which they were allegedly allowed to display on the formerly uniformly red battle flag from 1289 by king Rudolph I of Habsburg at the occasion of a campaign to Besançon.

   Some popular scholars have inferred from the Swiss and Templar flags’ similarity that in a sense the Templars finally got the state that they had long sought in Switzerland. (The Templars are now a publishing industry.)

   http://blog.templarhistory.com/2010/03/did-the-templars-form-switzerland/

   In any case, the evolution of the Templars from a religious order, to an elite army, to a multinational corporation, to international bankers, to – perhaps — a state, is intriguing.

   Of course, to what extent is that true of other organizations, like the EIC in India?

   Reply ↓
8. compare and decide January 19, 2014 at 1:48 am

   What is a corporation?

   Here’s the wiki:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation

   A corporation is a separate legal entity that has been incorporated either directly through legislation or through a registration process established by law. Incorporated entities have legal rights and liabilities that are distinct from their employees and shareholders,[1] and may conduct business as either a profit-seeking business or not for profit business. Early incorporated entities were established by charter (i.e. by an ad hoc act granted by a monarch or passed by a parliament or legislature). Most jurisdictions now allow the creation of new corporations through registration. In addition to legal personality, registered corporations tend to have limited liability, be owned by shareholders[2][3] who can transfer their shares to others, and controlled by a board of directors who are normally elected or appointed by the shareholders.

   Despite not being human beings, corporations, as far as the law is concerned, are legal persons, and have many of the same rights and responsibilities as natural people do. Corporations can exercise human rights against real individuals and the state,[5][6] and they can themselves be responsible for human rights violations.[7] Corporations can be “dissolved” either by statutory operation, order of court, or voluntary action on the part of shareholders. Insolvency may result in a form of corporate failure, when creditors force the liquidation and dissolution of the corporation under court order,[8] but it most often results in a restructuring of corporate holdings. Corporations can even be convicted of criminal offenses, such as fraud and manslaughter. However corporations are not considered living entities in the way that humans are.[9]

   In a nutshell, a corporation is an organization that cannot be held liable for the actions of its members outside of their role in the corporation; conversely, members of a corporation cannot be personally held accountable for the policies of the corporation.

   In the Roman Empire, all sorts of groups were considered corporations, including the Roman state.

   The word “corporation” derives from corpus, the Latin word for body, or a “body of people.” By the time of Justinian (reigned 527–565), Roman Law recognized a range of corporate entities under the names universitas, corpus or collegium. These included the state itself (the populus Romanus), municipalities, and such private associations as sponsors of a religious cult, burial clubs, political groups, and guilds of craftsmen or traders. Such bodies commonly had the right to own property and make contracts, to receive gifts and legacies, to sue and be sued, and, in general, to perform legal acts through representatives. Private associations were granted designated privileges and liberties by the emperor.

   In medieval Europe, churches became incorporated, as did local governments, such as the Pope and the City of London Corporation. The point was that the incorporation would survive longer than the lives of any particular member, existing in perpetuity. The alleged oldest commercial corporation in the world, the Stora Kopparberg mining community in Falun, Sweden, obtained a charter from King Magnus Eriksson in 1347.

   European colonization was a stimulus to creating corporations in the early modern world.

   Many European nations chartered corporations to lead colonial ventures, such as the Dutch East India Company or the Hudson’s Bay Company. These chartered companies became the progenitors of the modern corporation. Acting under a charter sanctioned by the Dutch government, the Dutch East India Company defeated Portuguese forces and established itself in the Moluccan Islands in order to profit from the European demand for spices. Investors in the VOC were issued paper certificates as proof of share ownership, and were able to trade their shares on the original Amsterdam stock exchange. Shareholders are also explicitly granted limited liability in the company’s royal charter.

   In England, the government created corporations under a Royal Charter or an Act of Parliament with the grant of a monopoly over a specified territory. The best known example, established in 1600, was the British East India Company. Queen Elizabeth I granted it the exclusive right to trade with all countries to the east of the Cape of Good Hope. Corporations at this time would essentially act on the government’s behalf, bringing in revenue from its exploits abroad. Subsequently the Company became increasingly integrated with British military and colonial policy, just as most UK corporations were essentially dependent on the British navy’s ability to control trade routes.

   Labeled by both contemporaries and historians as “the grandest society of merchants in the universe”, the British East India Company would come to symbolize the dazzlingly rich potential of the corporation, as well as new methods of business that could be both brutal and exploitative.[13] On 31 December 1600, the English monarchy granted the company a 15-year monopoly on trade to and from the East Indies and Africa.[14] By 1611, shareholders in the East India Company were earning an almost 150% return on their investment. Subsequent stock offerings demonstrated just how lucrative the Company had become. Its first stock offering in 1613–1616 raised £418,000, and its second offering in 1617–1622 raised £1.6 million.[15]

   So the original corporations were chartered by governments (and guilds).

   The modern revolution in the history of corporation was from a shift from royal charters to mere registration of corporations as business entities with the provincial or national governments.

   Due to the late 18th century abandonment of mercantilist economic theory and the rise of classical liberalism and laissez-faire economic theory due to a revolution in economics led by Adam Smith and other economists, corporations transitioned from being government or guild affiliated entities to being public and private economic entities free of government direction.

   The process of incorporation was possible only through a royal charter or a private act and was limited, owing to Parliament’s jealous protection of the privileges and advantages thereby granted. As a result, many businesses came to be operated as unincorporated associations with possibly thousands of members. Any consequent litigation had to be carried out in the joint names of all the members and was almost impossibly cumbersome. Though Parliament would sometimes grant a private act to allow an individual to represent the whole in legal proceedings, this was a narrow and necessarily costly expedient, allowed only to established companies.

   Then in 1843, William Gladstone took chairmanship of a Parliamentary Committee on Joint Stock Companies, which led to the Joint Stock Companies Act 1844, regarded as the first modern piece of company law.[19] The Act created the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies, empowered to register companies by a two-stage process. The first, provisional, stage cost £5 and did not confer corporate status, which arose after completing the second stage for another £5. For the first time in history, it was possible for ordinary people through a simple registration procedure to incorporate.[20] The advantage of establishing a company as a separate legal person was mainly administrative, as a unified entity under which the rights and duties of all investors and managers could be channeled.

   However, there was still no limited liability and company members could still be held responsible for unlimited losses by the company.[21] The next, crucial development, then, was the Limited Liability Act 1855, passed at the behest of the then Vice President of the Board of Trade, Mr Robert Lowe. This allowed investors to limit their liability in the event of business failure to the amount they invested in the company – shareholders were still liable directly to creditors, but just for the unpaid portion of their shares. (The principle that shareholders are liable to the corporation had been introduced in the Joint Stock Companies Act 1844).

   Same thing happened in the United States.

   In the United States, forming a corporation usually required an act of legislation until the late 19th century. Many private firms, such as Carnegie’s steel company and Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, avoided the corporate model for this reason (as a trust). State governments began to adopt more permissive corporate laws from the early 19th century, although these were all restrictive in design, often with the intention of preventing corporations for gaining too much wealth and power.

   In the context of the Industrial Revolution, this was a massive shift toward legal efficiency.

   In that context, there seems to have been no legal alternative but to create the modern corporation.

   Which sort of leads to the question: Is the corporation is such a bad thing?

   After all, on this blog, the comments are full of corporate bashing.

   But when someone asks, “Hey, have you guys checked out the latest iPhone?”, the responses are along the lines of “Yeah, I just pre-ordered mine! Can’t wait ‘till it gets here!”

   The problem with corporations might be the governments subsidization of the corporations, (e.g., agriculture in the US is all about subsidies for corporate agriculture since the Nixon administration (“Get big or get out”)).

   Reply ↓
9. compare and decide January 25, 2014 at 2:02 am

   Just a few notes on the status of the corporation in the modern imagination.

   The sociologist Emile Durkheim asserted that religion was rooted in communal feeling rather than belief in the supernatural (e.g., Buddhism does not have a belief in a deity). The primacy of social feeling over the role of a deity can best be illustrated in early religious notions like the totem, in which an animal is used as a symbol of a clan (much as they still are on sports teams). The inference from this is that deities as symbols are likewise representations of society, and reflect society’s unique characteristics (e.g., monotheism seems to appeal most within ‘universal’ multi-ethnic empires and to nomadic peoples).

   This raises the question of the role of the ‘devil’ figures that inhabit a society’s collective consciousness. Wouldn’t such a figure reflect the ‘shadow’ self of the society, that is, the projection of the society’s own worst fears about itself? Would mythological portraits of evil figures be potential forms of social critique? I recall reading that the author of the novel “Dracula”, Bram Stoker, was an Irishman who wrote in the anti-colonial and anti-aristocratic genre of the Irish ‘big house’ novel: the vampire as a metaphor for the colonial, aristocratic social order.

   What societal form would Frankenstein’s monster represent, if any? According to one certain scholarly theorist in France, in the modern world there has been a shift away from aristocratic societies that legitimate themselves according to their ‘bloodline’ (lineage) to their warrior past, and in which ‘blood’ or violence was a common theme (you have to watch “Game of Thrones” for that kind of rhetoric nowadays). In contrast, in the modern world, political legitimation shifts from ancient dynasties to nation states’ regulation of their populations (‘bio-politics’), almost like a farm or plantation. Paradoxically, state sovereignty now lies with this passive population that is managed by technocrats (and even the technocratic elite earnestly believe in this popular sovereignty). In a sense, the modern state is a corporation – an artificial man comprised of multitudes.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Leviathan_by_Thomas_Hobbes.jpg

   According to the horror author Stephen King, the vampire, Frankenstein’s monster and the werewolf comprise the three basic archetypes of horror writing; all manifestations of monsters in modern literature derive from these three images.

   And perhaps the transformation of little boys in “Pinocchio” into donkeys is a lighter, humorous version of the idea of humans reverting to beastly form, as is the 1950s movie “I Was a Teenage Werewolf” or “An American Werewolf in London” (the latter seeming to imply that Americans are feral Englishmen). What in society might trigger the occasional fascination with werewolves? One guess might be the effect of war and chaos on youth. Crime rates have dropped precipitously in the United States, and no one really knows why. Guesses have included the high incarceration rate in the US (the highest in the world, by far), the widespread availability of birth control and abortion among the poor and a healthier environment due to increased government regulation of pollutants (in particular, of lead). But what is often overlooked is the effect of war on youth. In China, the generation that grew up during the most chaotic years of the Cultural Revolution in the late sixties were labeled the ‘lost generation’, and they filled the prisons in the 1970s, and authorities in China were puzzled by their basic lack of moral feeling (and now some of these former kids, like Bo Xilai, are rising to power). In the 1950s, there was in the US a similar wave of juvenile delinquency under the veneer of normalcy, by young people who grew up during the worst war in human history. The public and the politicians blamed the media (comic books). What follows is from the wiki on the ‘United States in the 1950s’.

   The Cold War era seemed to encourage witch hunts, and comics found themselves blamed for the alarming increase in juvenile delinquency and other social ills. In 1948, American children across the country piled their comic book collections in schoolyards, and, encouraged by parents, teachers, and clergymen, set them ablaze. In the same year, the media began attacking comic books. John Mason Brown of the Saturday Review of Literature described comics as the “marijuana of the nursery; the bane of the bassinet; the horror of the house; the curse of kids, and a threat to the future.” Dr. Fredric Wertham’s book Seduction of the Innocent rallied opposition to violence, gore, and sex in comics, arguing that it was harmful to the children who made up a large segment of the comic book audience.

   The Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency hearings in April and June 1954, focused specifically on graphic crime and horror comic books. When publisher William Gaines contended that he sold only comic books of good taste, one of Gaines’ comics cover was entered into evidence which showed an axe-wielding man holding aloft a severed woman’s head. When asked if he considered the cover in “good taste”, Gaines replied: “Yes, I do — for the cover of a horror comic.”

   Because of the unfavorable press coverage resulting from the hearings, the comic book industry adopted the Comics Code Authority (CCA), a self-regulatory ratings code that is still used by some publishers today in a modified form. In the immediate aftermath of the hearings, several publishers were forced to revamp their schedules and drastically censor or even cancel many popular long-standing comic series.

   (For the relevant crime rates, see the Atlantic story, “The Real Criminal Element: Lead”. Violent crime and teenage pregnancy are shown to increase from the early 1960s and then sharply fall starting from around 1990, the end of the Cold War. My interpretation here is based on Durkheim’s notion of ‘anomy’ or normlessness caused by social breakdown or dysfunction.)

   Could there be secondary horror archetypes that combine the primary archetypes, much as there are secondary colors (purple, green, orange) that combine the primary colors (red, yellow, blue)?

   If the vampire (aristocratic) and the werewolf (periodically animalistic) are combined, this produces the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde archetype. In fact, there is a whole line of movie actors who specialize in that kind of role, that of a highly cultured and civilized gentleman who has been morally and spiritually compromised: Claude Raines (in “The Invisible Man” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”), Herbert Lom (in “Gaslight” and the Pink Panther movies) and today Anthony Hopkins (who is simultaneous civilized and beastly as Hannibal Lector) and maybe Bryan Cranston (as Walter White/Heisenberg). I would expect that this kind of archetype would become popular during crises of legitimacy for the elite (Watergate in the 1970s, the bank bailouts in the 2000s); but this kind of crisis happens all the time because the elite often fall under scrutiny.

   If the werewolf (predatory, cannibalistic) and Frankenstein’s monster (lumbering undead) are combined, this produces the zombie archetype. And the unspoken presence in a zombie movie is race and racism. Here is clip from “Birth of a Nation”, which can be seen as the original zombie movie.

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t-7SVbLjBw

   But the issue is not just race, but the existence of an ‘underclass’ below the working class and even below the working poor. (That is, these two elements of hopeless poverty and race are tightly bound in the public imagination, and in a way that does not elicit sympathy for the poor, but rather fear.)

   From the wiki on the ‘underclass’.

   The underclass is the segment of the population that occupies the lowest possible position in a class hierarchy, below the core body of the working class. The general idea that a class system includes a population under the working class has a long tradition in the social sciences (e.g., lumpenproletariat). However, the specific term “underclass” was popularized during the last half of the 20th century, first by social scientists of American poverty and then by American journalists. The underclass concept has been a point of controversy among social scientists. Definitions and explanations of the underclass, as well as proposed solutions for managing or fixing the “underclass problem,” have been highly debated. The appropriateness of using the underclass term has also been questioned, with some social scientists claiming that the concept has been transformed into a codeword for intellectuals to demonize impoverished blacks and Latinos in the urban US.

   Many writers often highlight the social-psychological dimensions of the underclass. The underclass is often framed as holding beliefs, attitudes, opinions, and desires that are inconsistent with those held by society at large. The underclass is frequently described as a “discouraged” group with members who feel “cut off” from mainstream society.[20] Linked to this discussion of the underclass being psychologically deviant, the underclass is also said to have low levels of cognition and literacy.[17] Thus, the underclass is often seen as being mentally disconnected from the rest of society. Consider the following:

   “The underclass rejects many of the norms and values of the larger society. Among underclass youth, achievement motivation is low, education is undervalued, and conventional means of success and upward mobility are scorned. There is widespread alienation from society and its institutions, estrangement, social isolation, and hopelessness, the sense that a better life is simply not attainable through legitimate means.”[21]

   There has been in the West a powerful ambivalence towards the very poor. For example, even Marx claimed that the poorest people were apathetic, mercenary and dangerous to leftwing revolutionaries. Conservatives have, of course, always feared the poor. But even the middle class have argued, like Marx, that the very poor would destroy democracy if given the chance (hence historical restrictions limiting voting to property owners). This fear of the underclass is racially coded, but it also applies to a fear of the poorest whites. In a TV show like “The Living Dead”, what can be seen is not just sublimated race fear, but a fear within the American working class of falling through the cracks and becoming one of “them”.

   If a Frankenstein’s monster (fake human) and the vampire (an aristocrat and killer) are combined, this produces the elite killer robot archetype. The Terminator movies exemplify this, but so do the Alien franchise and Blade Runner.

   Incidentally, the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu asserted that the one movie that best exemplifies how power works in the modern world is “Alien”. That is, what was once alien has now been deeply implanted within you. This is in contrast to the spectacles of violence (e.g., crucifixion) that were once imposed onto society to maintain order.

   However, I think that the movie Blade Runner better illustrates how memories and identities are implanted. (Spoiler alert: In the director’s cut, the blade runner Decker is revealed at the end to be himself a replicant. Again, Decker is an elite killer robot, just like Roy Batty and his crew.)

   But in these movies, it is as though the elite killer robot is a metaphor for the corporation. In Alien, there is no mention of governments, only of the “Company”; in Blade Runner, there is Tyrell Corporation (its motto, “More human than human”, could apply to itself); in the Terminator, there is Cyberdyne Systems.

   In sum, it’s not primarily the fear of technology in the background of these films, but rather fear of the corporation.

   Reply ↓
   1. compare and decide January 26, 2014 at 1:28 am

      I would like to amend what I wrote above.

      First, let me summarize what I wrote.

      There are three (primary) monster archetypes, from which all images of the monstrous derive (at least in American fiction):

      1) Vampire.
      2) Frankenstein.
      3) Werewolf.

      There are at least three compound or secondary monster archetypes derived from combining these primary archetypes.

      4) Vampire + werewolf = Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde
      5) Werewolf + Frankenstein = zombie
      6) Frankenstein + vampire = elite killer robot

      But there is one more category that I did not think about: a combination of all three primary archetypes.

      7) Werewolf + Vampire + Frankenstein = shapeshifting elite killer robot

      Of course, in the “Terminator” sequels, the liquid-metal T-1000 and the T-X fit that description.

      The aliens in the “Alien” films are in some ways shapeshifting, seemingly both female and male (e.g., the extending mouth), organic and mechanical, and their evolution is influenced by the DNA of their hosts. But this is more like ambiguity than like shapeshifting.

      The monster in “Alien” was originally designed by the Swiss artist HR Giger. But there seem to be similarities of Giger’s aesthetic with Fritz Lang’s 1927 “Metropolis”.

      Here is the ‘machine-human’ that looks like the ‘xenomorph’ in the “Alien” movies in some ways.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PN6zzgftlY

      Here is the transformation of the Machinenmensch into Maria’s image. Now this is more like shapeshifting.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzINI3au9q0

      Is she an evil robot or just a nice German girl? Sometimes it hard to tell the difference. Interestingly, this clip does seem to predict the future of Germany. From the wiki on the film.

      Made in Germany during the Weimar Period, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia, and follows the attempts of Freder, the wealthy son of the city’s ruler, and Maria, whose background is not fully explained in the film, to overcome the vast gulf separating the classes of their city.

      Despite the films technical virtuosity, the story – written by the director’s wife, who became a Nazi – is simplistic and sentimental, and was embraced by the Nazi leadership, who liked the themes of societal unity and the primacy of emotion (putting the ‘heart’ above the ‘head’ and the ‘hand’).

      What’s fascinating is how the scenes of the self-destructiveness of demagoguery work against this kitschy intended story. The robot seems to symbolize the will of a mad scientist, of unreason posing as reason, and of the dangers of both the irrational and the falsely rational. So if a monster is a metaphor for society, then the movie is an unwitting prophecy of Nazi Germany, and is not an apt critique of the contemporaneous Weimar Republic.

      Reply ↓
10. compare and decide January 29, 2014 at 1:54 am

    It is time to talk about pirates … as opposed to corporations.

    An important component of classic piracy in the Caribbean was pirate democracy.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy#Pirate_democracy

    Unlike traditional Western societies of the time, many Caribbean pirate crews of European descent operated as limited democracies. Pirate communities were some of the first to instate a system of checks and balances similar to the one used by the present-day United States and many other countries. The first record of such a government aboard a pirate sloop dates to the 17th century.

    Both the captain and the quartermaster were elected by the crew. They, in turn, appointed the ship’s other officers. The captain of a pirate ship was often a fierce fighter in whom the men could place their trust, rather than a more traditional authority figure sanctioned by an elite. However, when not in battle, the quartermaster usually had the real authority. Many groups of pirates shared in whatever they seized. Pirates injured in battle thus might be afforded special compensation similar to medical or disability insurance.
    There are contemporary records that many pirates placed a portion of any captured money into a central fund that was used to compensate the injuries sustained by the crew. Lists show standardised payments of 600 pieces of eight ($156,000 in modern currency) for the loss of a leg down to 100 pieces ($26,800) for loss of an eye. Often all of these terms were agreed upon and written down by the pirates, but these articles could also be used as incriminating proof that they were outlaws.

    This democratic ethos was reflected in the pirates’ compensation practices.

    Pirates had a system of hierarchy on board their ships determining how captured money was distributed. However, pirates were more “egalitarian” than any other area of employment at the time. In fact pirate quartermasters were a counterbalance to the captain and had the power to veto his orders. The majority of plunder was in the form of cargo and ship’s equipment with medicines the most highly prized. A vessel’s doctor’s chest would be worth anywhere from £300 to £400, or around $470,000 in today’s values.

    Ordinary seamen received a part of the plunder at the captain’s discretion but usually a single share. On average, a pirate could expect the equivalent of a year’s wages as his share from each ship captured while the crew of the most successful pirates would often each receive a share valued at around £1,000 ($1.17 million) at least once in their career.[47] One of the larger amounts taken from a single ship was that by captain Thomas Tew from an Indian merchantman in 1692. Each ordinary seaman on his ship received a share worth £3,000 ($3.5 million) with officers receiving proportionally larger amounts as per the agreed shares with Tew himself receiving 2½ shares. It is known there were actions with multiple ships captured where a single share was worth almost double this.

    Sicilian organized crime ‘families’ – known to outsiders as the mafia, but to insiders as La Cosa Nostra (‘our thing’) – are likewise democratic. From the wiki on the ‘Sicilian Mafia’:

    The boss of a clan is typically elected by the rank-and-file soldiers (though violent successions do happen). Due to the small size of most Sicilian clans, the boss of a clan has intimate contact with all members, and doesn’t receive much in the way of privileges or rewards as he would in larger organizations (such as the larger Five Families of New York).[100] His tenure is also frequently short: elections are yearly, and he might be deposed sooner for misconduct or incompetence.

    The consigliere (“counselor”) of the clan is also elected on a yearly basis. One of his jobs is to supervise the actions of the boss and his immediate underlings, particularly in financial matters (e.g. preventing embezzlement).[102] He also serves as an impartial adviser to the boss and mediator in internal disputes. To fulfill this role, the consigliere must be impartial, devoid of conflict of interest and ambition.

    This is considerably different from elite organized crime in the US, which is governed by the Commission – which is in a sense a classic corporation. From the wiki on the ‘Commission’:

    The Commission is the governing body of the American Mafia.[1] Formed in 1931, the Commission replaced the “Boss of all Bosses” title with a ruling committee consisting of the New York Five Families bosses and the boss of the Chicago Outfit.[1] The last known Commission meeting held with all the bosses was in November 1985.

    Pre-Commission situation

    Before the Commission was formed the American Mafia crime families were under control of one man known as the capo di tutti capi (“boss of all bosses”).[1] This man held great power over all their bosses, leading to disputes and wars.

    In 1929, two New York Mafia bosses Joe “The Boss” Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano fought over the title in the Castellammarese War. On April 15, 1931, Masseria was murdered[1] allowing Maranzano to assume the title of capo di tutti capi. Maranzano began to divide all the national criminal gangs into several crime families. It was decided between Charles “Lucky” Luciano and his allies that Maranzano would be removed. On September 10, 1931, he was murdered.

    The Commission’s formation

    After Maranzano’s murder in 1931, the Mafia families called a meeting in Chicago.[1][3] The purpose of the meeting was to replace the old Sicilian Mafia regime of “boss of all bosses” and establish a rule of consensus among the crime families.[1] Charlie Luciano established a Mafia board of directors to be known as “The Commission” to oversee all Mafia activities in the United States and serve to mediate conflicts between families.[1] The Commission consisting of seven family bosses: the leaders of New York’s Five Families: Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, Vincent Mangano, Tommy Gagliano, Joseph Bonanno and Joe Profaci, the Chicago Outfit boss Al Capone and Buffalo family boss Stefano Magaddino.[1][4] Charlie Luciano was appointed chairman of the Commission. The Commission agreed to hold meetings every five years or when they needed to discuss family problems.

    The Commission held the power of approving a new boss before he could take over officially.[1] The New York Five Families also decided that the names of all new proposed members must be approved by the other families.[1] After the new proposed member is approved by the other families he could become a made man.[1]

    It’s interesting how open the Commission was to other ethnic groups.

    The Commission allowed Jewish mobsters Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, Dutch Schultz and Abner “Longie” Zwillman to work alongside them and participate in some meetings.[5] In 1935, Dutch Schultz questioned the Commission’s authority when he wanted to have prosecutor Thomas Dewey murdered. Instead the Commission had Schultz killed on October 23, 1935.[6] The Commission used Louis Buchalter’s Murder Inc,[5] to dispose of any rivals to their authority.

    It’s interesting how this corporation outsources it’s homicides to ‘Murder Inc.’ From the wiki:

    Murder, Inc. (or Murder Incorporated) was the name the press gave to organized crime groups in the 1930s through the 1940s that acted as the “enforcement arm” of the American Mafia, the early organized crime groups in New York and elsewhere.[1] Originally headed by Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, and later by Albert “The Mad Hatter” Anastasia, Murder, Inc. was believed to be responsible for between 400 and 1,000 contract killings,[2] until the group was exposed in the early 1940s by informer and group member Abe “Kid Twist” Reles. In the trials that followed, many members were convicted and executed, and Abe Reles himself died after mysteriously falling out of a window.

    Most of the killers were Italian and Jewish gangsters from the gangs of the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Brownsville, East New York, and Ocean Hill. In addition to carrying out crime in New York City and acting as enforcers for New York Jewish mobster Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, they accepted murder contracts from mob bosses all around the United States.

    Based in part out of Midnight Rose candy store in Brooklyn, Murder Inc. hit men used a wide variety of weapons, including ice picks, to murder their victims.[4] Though the group had a number of members, Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss was the most prolific killer, committing over 100 murders (some historians put the number as high as 500).

    The killers were paid a regular salary as retainer as well as an average fee of $1,000 to $5,000 per killing. Their families also received monetary benefits. If the killers were caught, the mob would hire the best lawyers for their defense.

    There seems to be a Commission for the LCN in Sicily since the 1950s or 1970s, but it seems more a decentralized communication medium. In any case, it was inspired by the American LCN’s Commission.

    According to Tommaso Buscetta the first Sicilian Mafia Commission for the province of Palermo was formed after a series of meetings between top American and Sicilian mafiosi that took place in Palermo between October 12-16 1957, in the hotel Delle Palme and the Spanò seafood restaurant. US gangsters Joseph Bonanno and Lucky Luciano suggested their Sicilian counterparts to form a Commission, following the example of the American Mafia that had formed their Commission in the 1930s.

    In any case, in the world of organized crime, in the US, the corporate form, rather than democracy, seems to be as American as pizza pie.

    America’s not a democracy, it’s just a corporation.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UzPdUzygvE

    Reply ↓

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.