Last week I began a discussion of hierarchies, especially spiritual hierarchies. I found that where an emphasis on the emblems of hierarchy such as titles and ranks exist, one can always find the tendency towards power being collected into the hands of the few and away from the many.
Before delving more deeply into spiritual hierarchies, which I plan to do in the next column of this series, I would like to bow to worldly hierarchies, in recognition of the political race for leadership here in the USA which is currently rampaging across the television and other media, and focus on models of political structure.
In 1970, after Don Elkins and I had written the novel, The Crucifixion of Esmeralda Sweetwater: a Parable, we started working on another novel, which we called Deep Space. In it, the main characters were a mated pair who were part of a clan of those people interested in serving their country as statesmen. We posited that in the 21st century, the political structure of the United States had been thoroughly overhauled. No single person could run for offices such as President, Vice-President, Senator, Representative, Governor or Lieutenant Governor. Always, the candidates, whether marriage partners or career partners, ran as a team, one male and one female.
Our reason for creating this arrangement was that we felt it would bring forward the sacred feminine energy which is so notably missing from our current political environment. We also did away with the Electoral College and campaigning as it exists today in our unfinished novel. The challenge the two main characters faced in our novel was to create of our country and the world such balanced nation-states that the Confederation of Planets would accept us as members and thereby allow our astronauts to penetrate deep space.
The manuscript of this novel remains unfinished, as Elkins turned his attention to creating a screenplay from our first novel. After I wrote three different screenplays, none of which found a producer in Hollywood, Elkins and I decided to make a movie ourselves. We found a producer with an interest in making a film to be shown in drive-in movie theaters, which in the seventies were still quite popular in the south. We actually finished and distributed our film, a pure sexploitation film called The Girl Snatchers, in 1972.
In addition to writing the screenplay with Don, I created the sets, shooting schedule, make-up and special effects. And at the last minute I became an unlikely topless actress, when the incoming beauty got to town, read the script and promptly quit. “I am not a comedienne,” she stated on her way out the door. “I am a film star.” Why would a sex-and-violence film be considered a comedy? You who know Professor Elkins and me know that in our hands, such a script would end up being a send-up.
Making that film was an experience I will remember forever! And it still exists, in video-cassette form, as a cult classic of very minor hue, put out by a company called Le Bad Cinema. It is bad! But there is something fetching about it. I am proud of creating that movie.
After we had learned the business, Don and I again tried to make The Crucifixion of Esmerelda Sweetwater into a movie script, and had more success this time, as our script ended up, after being stolen from us, scalped of all possible truth and larded with nonsense, as the film, Hangar 18. Released in 1980, it starred Darren McGavin and Robert Vaughn. It flopped rather badly.
I allow myself this digression not only because it is a good story, but also because Don and I, as partners, were a good example of the efficacy of the concept of working in partnership. Had we been able to run for office as partners, I believe our candidacy would have been superior to that of any single person, male or female. We were more than the sum of our parts. Something better than we were alone was created whenever we got together to work on a goal or project.
