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The Miracle of Context

Image Source: Minds . Can you recognize  the truth, if it's taken out of context? The Internet has lately become Pandora's Box, spilling out its contents to those who dare to look  (or look again - or again ). Images Source: Hello! Magazine / Getty . Last week, a friend dismissed my claim that people want to see the truth. He thinks people are not interested in abstracts like 'truth.' They just want to get on with their lives. Whether they want the truth or not, the signs and symbols of truth are on the move. Conversations float around and skim the surface. Another friend wondered out loud tonight, "It feels like the virus is more of a meme than anything else." In the wake of the US inauguration, disinformation, strange rumours, and weird info dumps are circulating online. Everything feels off, but bizarrely connected. There is something bigger at play. Image Source: 4chan ; also here . Truth and fiction overlap. There is no way to drill down to bedrock. It

The Terror of the Explorer


Still from The Terror (2018) © AMC. Reproduced under Fair Use. Image Source: AMC.

Every day, thousands of people fly to China from around the world, and think nothing of it. In 2015, 8,000 Americans flew to China daily; and in 2017, over 145 million tourists from around the world entered China.

These staggering numbers make us forget how far we have come, how quickly. In the 1840s, the shortest route by ship was an impossible, deadly journey. What is less well remembered is that Canada was discovered and explored as a country primarily because people were trying to get to China, and they found Canada in the way.

Still from The Terror (2018) © AMC. Reproduced under Fair Use. Image Source: AMC.

In 2013, I published a short story from my upcoming collection, Isis Chrysalis, called "Explorer." You can read it here. "Explorer" concerns the fate of one fictional member of the 1845 Franklin expedition to find the Northwest passage to China.

In reality, all members of the expedition perished. The first three men to die were buried. Their graves were later found in 1850, and they were exhumed in 1984. The two ships involved were not located until 2014 and 2016.

Many Canadian artists and writers have described the Franklin expedition because it has become a kind of national ghost story. On  26 March 2018, a new Ridley Scott television series, The Terror, will dramatize the expedition on the American channel, AMC. You may be able to watch the episodes online, here.

Arctic Ghost Ship (2015): HMS Terror and Erebus Full PBS NOVA Documentary (uploaded 4 January 2017) © PBS. Video Source: Youtube. The video is also posted here. Reproduced under Fair Use.

When I wrote "Explorer," I was partly inspired by a 2006 PBS documentary on NOVA; another 2015 program, Arctic Ghost Ship, offered similar material. These documentaries show archaeologists dissecting corpses from the Franklin expedition. I have collected several images about the expedition here; the dedicated Royal Ontario Museum exhibition page is here.



John Torrington, a Mancunian stoker on the Franklin expedition, died and was buried by the Franklin expedition members. His body was preserved by the Arctic environment and he was later subjected to an autopsy by forensic archaeologists in 1984. Drawing (2012) © Kristina Gehrmann. Click to enlarge the image of the grave marker. Images Sources: pinterest/Wiki.

"Explorer" describes the masculine urge to explore frontiers past all boundaries, past hope and sanity, and the feminine desire to close the circle afterwards. My main character was a fictionalized version of one of Franklin's mummified men.

In the story, one of the archaeologists becomes a new female companion for the lost explorer, and she ushers him into a new, undead life. He has made the transition from sailor, to mummy entombed in ice, to museum subject dug up and dissected. He finally graduates to become a globally disseminated digital character on Youtube and the Internet. I saw the dead explorer's trajectory as one big adventure, ending in pixels that fall like Arctic tears.

Image Source: Facebook.

The story also concerned how something can sit in front of you every day, begging you to pay attention, while you only acknowledge it subconsciously. I wrote this story, coincidentally, while living in a building in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada called 'The Sir John Franklin' at 11111-87 Avenue Northwest. Every day, I walked home to be greeted by an overhang bearing Franklin's name.

In this blog post, reflecting back, I ask: what do you have sitting right under your nose that is continually flashing the answer to some part of your future? Are you ignoring it?

CBC: "Parks Canada divers beneath the Arctic sea ice explore the remains of the Franklin Expedition's HMS Erebus."RAW: Exploring Franklin expedition wreckage (16 April 2015). Reproduced under Fair Use. Video Source: Youtube.

Centre for International Governance Innovation: Discovering the Erebus: Mysteries of the Franklin Voyage Revealed (5 February 2015). Reproduced under Fair Use. Video Source: Youtube.

Lost Franklin Expedition ship HMS Terror found in Arctic (13 September 2016). Reproduced under Fair Use. Video Source: Youtube.

CBC on the discovery of the HMS Terror: Underwater footage shows 'perfectly preserved' HMS Terror (12 September 2016). Reproduced under Fair Use. Video Source: Youtube.

The ships from the Franklin expedition were finally located on 2 September 2014 (HMS Erebus) and 12 September 2016 (HMS Terror). The discovery was made after investigators reevaluated Inuit oral history. Passing the information from person to person, the Inuit had remembered the location of the ships for over 170 years.

THE TERROR Official Trailer #2 "This Place Wants Us Dead" (HD) AMC Suspense Series (15 January 2018) © AMC. Reproduced under Fair Use. Video Source: Youtube.

THE TERROR Official Featurette "A Look at Season 1" (HD) Ciarin Hinds AMC Horror Series (14 February 2018) © AMC. Reproduced under Fair Use. Video Source: Youtube.

This Monday, 26 March 2018, the American channel AMC will broadcast the premiere of the series The Terror, produced partly by Ridley Scott. This dramatization depicts an environment too big and terrifying, even for intrepid Victorians.

Image Source: Geek Tyrant.

As the trailer hints, the trouble starts with a polar bear plundering the expedition's lifeboat provisions. We are accustomed to seeing polar bears as beautiful, cuddly white inmates of zoos. In the 1980s, the father of one of my friends was a Canadian army officer, who was sent up to the Arctic to check the DEW Line for NORAD. He was told that if you could see a polar bear as a tiny dot in your binoculars, then it was too close.

Whether we are talking about Franklin and his men, who were seasoned explorers, or travelers today, there is a misconception that the Arctic is an accessible place.

Performance artist Laurie Anderson discovered this when she hitchhiked to the North Pole in 1974: traveling to this environment is no joke. It is a place where death immediately confronts you. All it takes is for one tiny thing to go wrong. She recorded her account of the North Pole in The Ugly One with the Jewels (1995).

Laurie Anderson - The Geographic North Pole (5 March 2018) © Laurie Anderson/Warner Bros.. Reproduced under Fair Use. Video Source: Youtube.


Comments

  1. So many insights in such a short piece - well done!

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    1. Thank you, Avrum! I am curious to see how this television series will play out. I suspect they will add a bunch of horror film tropes. In fact, they would be better to deal with the absolute desolation that those men must have experienced.

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