Orpheus and cinema/movie theatres

Daniel Cape daniel.cape at gmail.com
Thu Aug 20 23:29:08 CDT 2009


Why are there so many movie theatres whose names refer to Orpheus?

Is it cos "Orpheus was an augur and seer; practiced magical arts,
especially astrology [stars, eh?]; founded or rendered accessible many
important cults; instituted mystic rites both public and private; and
prescribed initiatory and purificatory rituals, which his community of
followers treasured"? (cribbed from Wikipedia, as below)

P'raps we can find illumination in the etymology of his name, 'a
probable suggestion being that it is derived from the hypothetical
*orbhao-, "to be deprived", from PIE *orbh-, "to put asunder,
separate"'. I often feel this odd paradoxical sense of isolation and
community in a theatre: 'Cognates would include Greek orphe,
"darkness"[18], and Greek orphanos[19], "fatherless, orphan"'.

Furthermore:
'Orpheus would therefore be semantically close to goao[20], "to
lament, sing wildly, cast a spell", (can definitely find all these at
the flix) uniting his seemingly disparate roles as disappointed lover
(ooo if only i could reach out and touch that starlet whom I desire
and gaze at!), transgressive musician (yeah, you watch it Morricone,
with your idiosinkratic arrangements!) and mystery-priest into a
single lexical whole.'

And:
'The word "orphic" is defined as mystic, fascinating and entrancing,'
certainly cinema, no? 'and, probably, because of the oracle of
Orpheus, "orphic" can also signify "oracular",' well, sometimes a film
is bang on the nose.



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