The Book of Life/Passport to Magonia/The Super Natural

I watched the animated movie 'The Book of Life' the other day and while I knew the movie was based on the Mexican 'Day of the Dead', I couldn't help thinking that there truly is an alien sub-theme running through the movie, as well.

Very much in a 'Passport to Magonia/The Super Natural' kind of way.

I filled in the eyes to show the alien shape of the face

"It is readily acknowledged that our time has surpassed all epochs in history for the accumulation of technical knowledge, physical power over our environment, and economic might. 

It is less often pointed out, however, that our age has generated, and continues to generate, mythical material almost unparalleled in quantity and quality in the rich records of human imagination. 

More precisely, people have very frequently reported the observation of wonderful aerial objects, variously designated as flying saucers, unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and so on; among these narratives descriptions of landings made by these craft are commonplace; and that quite a few accounts purport to inform us of the physical characteristics, the psychological behaviour, and the motivation of their occupants. 

But investigators have neglected to recognize one important perspective of the phenomenon: the fact that beliefs identical to those held today have recurred throughout recorded history and under forms best adapted to the believer's country, race, and social regime. 

If we take a wide sample of this historical material, we find that it is organized around one central theme: visitation by an aerial people from one or more remote, legendary countries. 

The names and attributes vary, but the main idea clearly does not. 

Magonia, heaven, hell, Elfland - all such places have in common one characteristic: we are unable to reach them alive, except on very special occasions. 

Emissaries from these supernatural abodes come to earth, sometimes under human form and sometimes as monsters. 

They perform wonders. 

They serve man or fight him. 

They influence civilizations through mystical revelation."
Whitley Strieber, Bruce Lee and the Two Way Mirror Analogy

In the movie these discs sway in the sky
 almost like subliminal UFOs 

Are those corks skulls, aliens, or both?

Flying disc/UFO?

"Less than fifty thousand years ago mankind had no art, no religion, no sophisticated symbolism, no innovative thinking. 

Then, in a dramatic and electrifying change, described by scientists as "the greatest riddle in human history," all the skills and qualities that we value most highly in ourselves appeared already fully formed, as though bestowed on us by hidden powers.
In Supernatural Graham Hancock sets out to investigate this mysterious "before-and-after moment" and to discover the truth about the influences that gave birth to the modern human mind. 

His quest takes him on a detective journey from the stunningly beautiful painted caves of prehistoric France, Spain, and Italy to rock shelters in the mountains of South Africa, where he finds extraordinary 

Stone Age art. 

He uncovers clues that lead him to the depths of the Amazon rainforest to drink the powerful hallucinogen Ayahuasca with shamans, whose paintings contain images of "supernatural beings" identical to the animal-human hybrids depicted in prehistoric caves. 

Hallucinogens such as mescaline also produce visionary encounters with exactly the same beings. Scientists at the cutting edge of consciousness research have begun to consider the possibility that such hallucinations may be real perceptions of other "dimensions." 

Could the "supernaturals" first depicted in the painted caves be the ancient teachers of mankind? Could it be that human evolution is not just the "meaningless" process that Darwin identified, but something more purposive and intelligent that we have barely begun to understand?"
Midnight Sun: An Exploration of the UFO & Alien Abduction Phenomenon

Zoe Saldana voices Maria, pictured above
 waking up from an NDE

Zoe Saldana also voices Neytiri from 'Avatar'

Zoe Saldana, the actress who voices Maria is in a lot of movies playing aliens, just take a look at her IMDB page to see what I mean.

Mary Bath, a red-headed alien with blue eyes?

"The Villas-Boas case, is the well documented Brazilian "UFO abduction" case wherein farmer Antonio Villas-Boas was allegedly taken on board a UFO craft, given an aphrodisiac liquid to drink then made to copulate twice with an attractive red-haired, pointy-breasted "space alien" female..."

If you read the books I've mentioned above and view the movie, 'The Book of Life', you'll get the many levels that this film draws from, whether the makers of the movie did this intentionally, or otherwise.

I thought it was amusing when I was looking up a website to see where Mexico was ranked as a country for UFO sightings and found the rainbow coloured alien face on the website's advertising.
When I started writing this post it wasn't going to be so much about aliens, but a discussion of death and the Mexican 'Day of the Dead'.
Maybe I'll have to write another post sometime in the near future about this movie, coming at it from another angle?

Notice that the characters when they are in the "real life" in this movie are portrayed as Pinocchio like puppets?  

"In one of those rare books that allows us to see the world not as we've never seen it before, but as we see it daily without knowing, Victoria Nelson illuminates the deep but hidden attraction the supernatural still holds for a secular mainstream culture that forced the transcendental underground and firmly displaced wonder and awe with the forces of reason, materialism, and science.
In a backward look at an era now drawing to a close, 
The Secret Life of Puppets describes a curious reversal in the roles of art and religion: where art and literature once took their content from religion, we came increasingly to seek religion, covertly, through art and entertainment. 

In a tour of Western culture that is at once exhilarating and alarming, Nelson shows us the distorted forms in which the spiritual resurfaced in high art but also, strikingly, in the mass culture of puppets, horror-fantasy literature, and cyborgs: from the works of Kleist, Poe, Musil, and Lovecraft to Philip K. Dick and virtual reality simulations. 

At the end of the millennium, discarding a convention of the demonized grotesque that endured three hundred years, a Demiurgic consciousness shaped in Late Antiquity is emerging anew to re-divinize the human as artists like Lars von Trier and Will Self reinvent Expressionism in forms familiar to our pre-Reformation ancestors. 

Here as never before, we see how pervasively but unwittingly, consuming art forms of the fantastic, we allow ourselves to believe."

Jorge R. Gutiérrez director/writer of 'The Book of Life'

On the subject of Mexico and aliens, I just saw this blogpost featuring an old internet amigo of mine, Red Pill Junkie -

Red Pill Junkie, Music Video Star!

Sneaky Sound System - UFO

"Before he was famous, Red Pill Junkie was an extra in a music video for Australian band Sneaky Sound System, appearing in their aptly named track 'UFO'. 

Is this where it all started for our paranormal superhero? 

The synchronicity is uncanny! 

He also plays a mean game of Scrabble."

And Holy Trinity Batman...

"Director Jorge Gutierrez revealed in an interview that one of the ideas for the next chapter in the story involves Joaquin and his relationship with his father. 

"I had always imagined the first movie to be about Manolo, the second to be about Joaquín and the third one to be about Maria ... I've always conceived it as a trilogy.""