John Boorman's films are implicitly white, as they address themes that pertain to people of White European descent, whether historical, philosophical or mythical. For the latter, an example would be the film Excalibur that I recently reviewed. Zardoz is a film that addresses the philosophical. This is another of Boorman's films that the critic Roger Ebert neither understands nor cares for - and I suspect more the latter, for the film is a biting satire directed at creamy bourgeois Leftists. Beyond the satire, which is cutting rather than amusing, Zardoz falls into two categories: dystopian fantasy and sci-fi thriller. As is usual in such films, what is being critiqued is the present - in this case, the mid-1970s.
I. Origins & Evolution of the Gothic in Film
The gothic is a quintessentially European aesthetic. Moreover, it
pertains and appeals more specifically to those of North-West European
descent and is to be found in various modes and tropes throughout
North-West European culture and contrasts with the Classicism of
Southern Europe. Gothic as a term was first applied to medieval art and
particularly architecture by Renaissance critics in similar propagandist
fashion to how the term Dark Ages was also used to describe the period
following the collapse of the Roman Empire. In both cases, the terms
were coined to denigrate Germanic ascendancy in culture as unenlightened
and barbaric in relation to the culture of Greco-Roman Classical
Antiquity and its Renaissance.[1]
