Ben Greenman's Layer 5 Commentary

Back To the Egg

Ah, Benjamin Button--how you have poisoned everything we touch!

Sam and Armin, I know you are designing crazily, but do either of you know the story "Viaje a la semilla," which translates as "Journey Back to the Source"? It tells the life story of a Spanish nobleman, but tells it in reverse, beginning with the demolition of his mansion and moving back to the start of his life. Where does life begin? At the moment of delivery? At the moment of conception? At the moment when one future parent gives the other future parent one too many drinks and hikes a skirt? These are questions too deep (and possibly too adult) for a family program like this one. particularly because Armin has moved the discussion aggressively back toward family values. Gone are the balls and the foot that kicks them. In their place we have only the stark fetus/alien and an origin story. In his story, the boy is ugly, but in the layer surrounding his story, nothing is ugly. The colors are back to basic black and white, the binary palette of life and death. We have a narrative that moves backward through time, again, even as it advances the case.

One relevant footnote. The boy in the story is ugly. He is named Discus. In Greek mythology, there was a beautiful young man named Hyacinth much beloved by the god Apollo. One day during discus practice, Hyacinth was struck and killed by a flying disc. Apollo was heartbroken and turned the boy into a flower rather than let him moulder in was killed by a flying discus. Distraught Apollo turned him into a flowering plant rather than let him moulder in the underworld. Discus, Greece, beauty: it all comes together, doesn't it?

Play by play commentary for this match is provided, as it happens, by Ben Greenman.

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