title: Archosaur

text: Paleontological evidence shows that the ancestors of living crocodilians were active and endothermic (warm-blooded). Some experts believe that their archosaur ancestors were warm-blooded as well. This is likely because feather-like filaments evolved to cover the whole body and were capable of providing thermal insulation. Physiological, anatomical, and developmental features of the crocodilian heart support the paleontological evidence and show that the lineage reverted to ectothermy when it invaded the aquatic, ambush predator niche. Crocodilian embryos develop fully 4-chambered hearts at an early stage. Modifications to the growing heart form a pulmonary bypass shunt that includes the left aortic arch, which originates from the right ventricle, the foramen of Panizza between the left and right aortic arches, and the cog‐tooth valve at the base of the pulmonary artery. The shunt is used during diving to make the heart function as 3-chambered heart, providing the crocodilian with the neurally controlled shunting used by ectotherms. The researchers concluded that the ancestors of living crocodilians had fully 4-chambered hearts, and were therefore warm-blooded, before they reverted to a cold-blooded or ectothermic metabolism. The authors also provide other evidence for endothermy in stem archosaurs. It is reasonable to suggest that later crocodilians developed the pulmonary bypass shunt as they became cold-blooded, aquatic, and less active.


title: Archosaur

text: If the crocodilian ancestors and other Triassic archosaurs were warm-blooded, this would help to resolve some evolutionary puzzles:


title: Archosaur

text: A recent study of the lungs of "Alligator mississippiensis" (the American alligator) has shown that the airflow through them is unidirectional, moving in the same direction during inhalation and exhalation. This is also seen in birds and many non-avian dinosaurs, which have air sacs to further aid in respiration. Both birds and alligators achieve unidirectional air flow through the presence of parabronchi, which are responsible for gas exchange. The study has found that in alligators, air enters through the second bronchial branch, moves through the parabronchi, and exits through the first bronchial branch. Unidirectional airflow in both birds and alligators suggests that this type of respiration was present at the base of Archosauria and retained by both dinosaurs and non-dinosaurian archosaurs, such as aetosaurs, "rauisuchians" (non-crocodylomorph paracrocodylomorphs), crocodylomorphs, and pterosaurs. The use of unidirectional airflow in the lungs of archosaurs may have given the group an advantage over synapsids, which had lungs where air moved tidally in and out through a network of bronchi that terminated in alveoli, which were cul-de-sacs. The better efficiency in gas transfer seen in archosaur lungs may have been advantageous during the times of low atmospheric oxygen which are thought to have existed during the Mesozoic.


title: Archosaur

text: Most (if not all) archosaurs are oviparous. Birds and crocodilians lay hard-shelled eggs, as did extinct dinosaurs, and crocodylomorphs. Hard-shelled eggs are present in both dinosaurs and crocodilians, which has been used as an explanation for the absence of viviparity or ovoviviparity in archosaurs. However, both pterosaurs and baurusuchids have soft-shelled eggs, implying that hard shells are not a plesiomorphic condition. The pelvic anatomy of "Cricosaurus" and other metriorhynchids and fossilized embryos belonging to the non-archosaur archosauromorph "Dinocephalosaurus," together suggest that the lack of viviparity among archosaurs may be a consequence of lineage-specific restrictions.


title: Archosaur

text: Archosaurs are ancestrally superprecocial as evidenced in various dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and crocodylomorphs. However, parental care did evolve independently multiple times in crocodilians, dinosaurs, and aetosaurs. In most such species the animals bury their eggs and rely on temperature-dependent sex determination. The notable exception are Neornithes which incubate their eggs and rely on genetic sex determination – a trait that might have given them a survival advantage over other dinosaurs.


title: Maenad

text: In Greek mythology, maenads (; ) were the female followers of Dionysus and the most significant members of the Thiasus, the god's retinue. Their name literally translates as "raving ones". Maenads were known as Bassarids, Bacchae , or Bacchantes in Roman mythology after the penchant of the equivalent Roman god, Bacchus, to wear a bassaris or fox skin.


title: Maenad

text: Often the maenads were portrayed as inspired by Dionysus into a state of ecstatic frenzy through a combination of dancing and intoxication. During these rites, the maenads would dress in fawn skins and carry a thyrsus, a long stick wrapped in ivy or vine leaves and tipped with a pine cone. They would weave ivy-wreaths around their heads or wear a bull helmet in honor of their god, and often handle or wear snakes.


title: Maenad

text: These women were mythologized as the "mad women" who were nurses of Dionysus in Nysa. Lycurgus "chased the Nurses of the frenzied Dionysus through the holy hills of Nysa, and the sacred implements dropped to the ground from the hands of one and all, as the murderous Lycurgus struck them down with his ox-goad". They went into the mountains at night and practised strange rites.


title: Maenad

text: According to Plutarch's "Life of Alexander", maenads were called "Mimallones" and "Klodones" in Macedon, epithets derived from the feminine art of spinning wool. Nevertheless, these warlike "parthenoi" ("virgins") from the hills, associated with a "Dionysios pseudanor" ("fake male Dionysus"), routed an invading enemy. In southern Greece they were described as "Bacchae", "Bassarides", "Thyiades", "Potniades", and other epithets.


title: Maenad

text: The term maenad has come to be associated with a wide variety of women, supernatural, mythological, and historical, associated with the god Dionysus and his worship.


title: Maenad

text: In Euripides' play "The Bacchae", maenads of Thebes murder King Pentheus after he bans the worship of Dionysus. Dionysus, Pentheus' cousin, himself lures Pentheus to the woods, where the maenads tear him apart. His corpse is mutilated by his own mother, Agave, who tears off his head, believing it to be that of a lion. A group of maenads also kill Orpheus, when he refuses to entertain them while mourning his dead wife.


title: Maenad

text: In ceramic art, the frolicking of Maenads and Dionysus is often a theme depicted on kraters, used to mix water and wine. These scenes show the maenads in their frenzy running in the forests, often tearing to pieces any animal they happen to come across.


title: Maenad

text: Cultist rites associated with the worship of the Greek god of wine, Dionysus (or Bacchus in Roman mythology), were characterized by maniacal dancing to the sound of loud music and crashing cymbals, in which the revelers, called Bacchantes, whirled, screamed, became drunk and incited one another to greater and greater ecstasy. The goal was to achieve a state of enthusiasm in which the celebrants' souls were temporarily freed from their earthly bodies and were able to commune with Bacchus/Dionysus and gain a glimpse of and a preparation for what they would someday experience in eternity. The rite climaxed in a performance of frenzied feats of strength and madness, such as uprooting trees, tearing a bull (the symbol of Dionysus) apart with their bare hands, an act called "sparagmos", and eating its flesh raw, an act called "omophagia". This latter rite was a sacrament akin to communion in which the participants assumed the strength and character of the god by symbolically eating the raw flesh and drinking the blood of his symbolic incarnation. Having symbolically eaten his body and drunk his blood, the celebrants became possessed by Dionysus.


title: Maenad

text: Maenads are found in later references as priestesses of the Dionysian cult. In the third century BC, when an Asia Minor city wanted to create a maenadic cult of Dionysus, the Delphic Oracle bid them send to Thebes for both instruction and three professional maenads, stating, "Go to the holy plain of Thebes so that you may get maenads who are from the family of Ino, daughter of Cadmus. They will give to you both the rites and good practices and they will establish dance groups (thiasoi) of Bacchus in your city."


title: Maenad

text: Dionysus came to his birthplace, Thebes, where neither Pentheus, his cousin who was now king, nor Pentheus' mother Agave, Dionysus' aunt (Semele's sister) acknowledged his divinity. Dionysus punished Agave by driving her insane, and in that condition, she killed her son and tore him to pieces. From Thebes, Dionysus went to Argos where all the women except the daughters of King Proetus joined in his worship. Dionysus punished them by driving them mad, and they killed the infants who were nursing at their breasts. He did the same to the daughters of Minyas, King of Orchomenos in Boetia, and then turned them into bats.


title: Maenad

text: According to Opian, Dionysus delighted, as a child, in tearing kids into pieces and bringing them back to life again. He is characterized as "the raging one" and "the mad one" and the nature of the maenads, from which they get their name, is, therefore, his nature.


title: Maenad

text: Once during a war in the middle of the third century BC, the entranced Thyiades (maenads) lost their way and arrived in Amphissa, a city near Delphi. There they sank down exhausted in the market place and were overpowered by a deep sleep. The women of Amphissa formed a protective ring around them and when they awoke arranged for them to return home unmolested.


title: Maenad

text: On another occasion, the Thyiades were snowed in on Parnassos and it was necessary to send a rescue party. The clothing of the men who took part in the rescue froze solid. It is unlikely that the Thyiades, even if they wore deerskins over their shoulders, were ever dressed more warmly than the men.


title: Maenad

text: In the realm of the supernatural is the category of nymphs who nurse and care for the young Dionysus, and continue in his worship as he comes of age. The god Hermes is said to have carried the young Dionysus to the nymphs of Nysa.


title: Maenad

text: In another myth, when his mother, Semele, is killed, the care of young Dionysus falls into the hands of his sisters, Ino, Agave, and Autonoe, who later are depicted as participating in the rites and taking a leadership role among the other maenads.


title: Maenad

text: The term "maenads" also refers to women in mythology who resisted the worship of Dionysus and were driven mad by him, forced against their will to participate in often horrific rites. The doubting women of Thebes, the prototypical maenads or "mad women", left their homes to live in the wilds of the nearby mountain Cithaeron. When they discovered Pentheus spying on them, dressed as a maenad, they tore him limb from limb.


title: Maenad

text: This also occurs with the three daughters of Minyas, who reject Dionysus and remain true to their household duties, becoming startled by invisible drums, flutes, cymbals, and seeing ivy hanging down from their looms. As punishment for their resistance, they become madwomen, choosing the child of one of their number by lot and tearing it to pieces, as the women on the mountain did to young animals. A similar story with a tragic end is told of the daughters of Proetus.


title: Maenad

text: Not all women were inclined to resist the call of Dionysus, however. Maenads, possessed by the spirit of Dionysus, traveled with him from Thrace to mainland Greece in his quest for the recognition of his divinity. Dionysus was said to have danced down from Parnassos accompanied by Delphic virgins, and it is known that even as young girls the women in Boeotia practiced not only the closed rites but also the bearing of the thyrsus and the dances.


title: Maenad

text: A possible foundation myth is the ancient festival called Agrionia. According to Greek authors like Plutarch, female followers of Dionysios went in search of him and when they could not find him prepared a feast. As Plutarch records this festival, a priest would chase a group of virgins down with a sword. These women were supposed to be descendants of the women who sacrificed their son in the name of Dionysios. The priest would catch one of the woman and execute her. This human sacrifice was later omitted from the festival. Eventually the women would be freed from the intense ecstatic experience of the festival and return to their usual lives. The Agrionia was celebrated in several Greek cities, but especially in Boeotia. Each Boeotian city had its own distinct foundation myth for it, but the pattern was much the same: the arrival of Dionysus, resistance to him, flight of the women to a mountain, the killing of Dionysus' persecutor, and eventual reconciliation with the god.


title: Maenad

text: The names of the maenads according to various vase paintings were: Anthe ("Flower"), Bacche, Kale ("Beauty"), Kalyke ("Bud"), Choiros ("Pig"), Choro ("Dance"), Chrysis ("Gold"), Kisso ("Ivy"), Klyto, Komodia ("Comedy"), Dorkis, Doro, Eudia ("Calm"), Eudaimonia ("Happiness"), Euthymia ("Good Cheer"), Erophyllis, Galene ("Calm"), Hebe ("Youth"), lo, Kraipale, Lilaia, Mainas, Makaria ("Blessed"), Molpe ("Song"), Myro, Naia, Nymphaia, Nymphe, Opora ("Harvest"), Oinanthe, Oreias ("Mountain-Nymph"), Paidia, Pannychis ("All-night Revel"), Periklymene ("Renowned"), Phanope, Philomela, Polyerate ("Well-beloved"), Rodo ("Rose"), Sime ("Snub-nose"), Terpsikome, Thaleia, Tragoedia ("Tragedy") and Xantho ("Fair-hair").


title: Maenad

text: Maenads have been depicted in art as erratic and frenzied women enveloped in a drunken rapture, as in Euripides' play "The Bacchae". In Euripides' play and other art forms and works, the frenzied dances of the god are direct manifestations of euphoric possession, and these worshippers, sometimes by eating the flesh of a man or animal who has temporarily incarnated the god, come to partake of his divinity.


title: Maenad

text: Depictions of maenads are often found on both red and black-figure Greek pottery, statues, and jewelry. Also, fragments of reliefs of female worshipers of Dionysus have been discovered at Corinth. Mark W. Edwards in his paper "Representation of Maenads on Archaic Red-Figure Vases" traces the evolution of maenad depictions on red figure vases. Edwards distinguishes between "nymphs," which appear earlier on Greek pottery, and "maenads," which are identified by their characteristic fawnskin or "nebris" and often carry snakes in their hands. However, Edwards does not consider the actions of the figures on the pottery to be a distinguishing characteristic for differentiation between maenads and nymphs. Rather, the differences or similarities in their actions are more striking when comparing black figure and red figure pottery, as opposed to maenads and nymphs.


title: Maenad

text: In Ivan Turgenev's novella "First Love", Bacchantes are used symbolically in a dream of Princess Zinaida.


title: Maenad

text: Maenads, along with Bacchus and Silenus, appear in C. S. Lewis' "Prince Caspian". They are portrayed as wild, fierce girls who dance and perform somersaults.


title: Maenad

text: Maenadism is referenced by the 2013 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Canadian Alice Munro, in her collection of short stories titled "Runaway" (2004). No explanation is offered for the significance of this reference, but the independence and power of this cultist group of women would seem to be a metaphor for the autonomy needed by women in the modern age, the better to stake out a claim against an oppressive patriarchy.


title: Maenad

text: Poul Anderson's "Goat Song" depicts a far-future utopia where all human activity has been "optimized" by the artificial intelligence SUM. To placate their fear of dying, citizens of this utopia are promised resurrection using DNA and memory records collected by bracelets that everyone wears. Rebelling against nonhuman control, one citizen called Harper (identified with Orpheus) awakens atavism in a group of women who spend holidays in the wild living as maenads.


title: Maenad

text: The short story "Las Ménades" by Julio Cortázar, originally published in "Final del juego" in 1956, describes a concert in which the narrator does not react emotionally to the music, but a number of women are overwhelmed with emotion and surge onto the stage, overtaking the conductor and musicians.


title: Maenad

text: In Piers Anthony's Xanth series, the maenads are depicted as women frenzied with bloodlust. The maenads were temporarily quelled by Magician Grey as his talent is nullification of magic. In combination with a large python protecting the Oracle's Cave, the maenads presence is to protect Mount Parnassus (see "Man from Mundania").


title: Maenad

text: In "", the seventh volume of Neil Gaiman's graphic novel series "The Sandman", the maenads feature in the story "Orpheus", in which they gruesomely murder the titular character after he refuses to cavort with them (echoing the events of the actual Greek myth of Orpheus).


title: Maenad

text: In the horror novel "Dominion" by Bentley Little, maenads are eventually revealed as the main antagonists for the first half of the story, during which they tear their victims to shreds and conspire to reawaken Dionysus.


title: Maenad

text: The "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" novel "" depicts maenads as corrupted human beings in service of the ancient and powerful Greek vampire Kakistos.


title: Maenad

text: The maenads appear in Rick Riordan's "The Demigod Diaries" where they are the principal enemies in the story "Leo Valdez and the Quest for Buford". While looking for the automaton table, Buford, Leo, Jason, and Piper run into the maenads, who are searching for Dionysus. They chase Leo and Piper into Bunker 9 and are subsequently captured in a golden net.


title: Maenad

text: In "Sailor Moon", the two priestesses guarding the shrine of Elysium deep within the Earth (the most sacred place of the Golden Kingdom) are called maenads. However, they have nothing in common with the mythological maenads: they are not frenzied or dangerous, their number is stable, don't travel (in fact they seem to be forbidden from leaving), and are not in any way connected with Dionysus/Bacchus (no reference to this god is ever made in the entire franchise). They are instead connected with a character named after the Greek personification of the sun (Helios).


title: Maenad

text: The short story "Last Call" of Jim Butcher's "The Dresden Files" features a maenad as a primary antagonist.


title: Maenad

text: "The Bassarids" (composed 1964–65, premiered 1966), to a libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, is the most famous opera composed by Hans Werner Henze.


title: Maenad

text: Charlaine Harris' "The Southern Vampire Mysteries" novels and its television adaptation, HBO's "True Blood" (2nd season, aired in summer 2009), feature maenads in the characters of Callisto and Maryann, respectively. In the show, Maryann wishes to sacrifice Sam Merlotte in hopes of summoning her god, Dionysus. Maryann is portrayed by Michelle Forbes.


title: Maenad

text: Maenads appear in "A Girl By Any Other Name", an episode of "Atlantis". They also appear in season 4 of "The Magicians", where they party alongside Bacchus and nurse him through his magical ailments.


title: Maenad

text: Maenads are the adopted symbol of Tetovo in North Macedonia, depicted prominently of the city's coat of arms. The inclusion of maenad imagery dates to 1932 when a small statuette of a maenad, dating to the 6th century BC, was found in the city. The "Tetovo Maenad" was featured on the reverse of a North Macedonian 5000 denar banknote issued in 1996.


title: Fact

text: A fact is a datum about one or more aspects of a circumstance, which, if accepted as true and proven true, allows a logical conclusion to be reached on a true–false evaluation. Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scientific facts are verified by repeatable careful observation or measurement by experiments or other means.


title: Fact

text: For example, "This sentence contains words." accurately describes a linguistic fact, and "The sun is a star" accurately describes an astronomical fact. Further, "Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States" and "Abraham Lincoln was assassinated" both accurately describe historical facts. Generally speaking, facts are independent of belief and of knowledge and opinion.


title: Fact

text: The word "fact" derives from the Latin "factum". It was first used in English with the same meaning: "a thing done or performed"a meaning now obsolete. The common usage of "something that has really occurred or is the case" dates from the mid-16th century.


title: Fact

text: Barbara J. Shapiro wrote in her book "A Culture of Fact" how the concept of a fact evolved, starting within the English legal tradition of the 16th century.


title: Fact

text: In 1870, Charles Sanders Peirce described in his book "The Fixation of Belief" four methods which people use to decide what they should believe: tenacity, method of authority, a priori and scientific method.


title: Fact

text: The term "fact" also indicates a "matter under discussion" deemed to be true or correct, such as to emphasize a point or prove a disputed issue; (e.g., "... the "fact" of the matter is ...").


title: Fact

text: Alternatively, "fact" may also indicate an allegation or stipulation of something that may or may not be a "true fact", (e.g., "the author's facts are not trustworthy"). This alternate usage, although contested by some, has a long history in standard English according to the "American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language." The "Oxford English Dictionary" dates this use to 1729.""


title: Fact

text: "Fact" may also indicate findings derived through a "process of evaluation", including review of testimony, direct observation, or otherwise; as distinguishable from matters of inference or speculation. This use is reflected in the terms "fact-find" and "fact-finder" (e.g., "set up a fact-finding commission").


title: Fact

text: Facts may be checked by reason, experiment, personal experience, or may be argued from authority. Roger Bacon wrote "If in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics."


title: Fact

text: In philosophy, the concept "fact" is considered in the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge, called epistemology and ontology, which studies concepts such as existence, being, becoming, and reality. Questions of objectivity and truth are closely associated with questions of fact. A fact can be defined as something that is the case, in other words, a state of affairs.


title: Fact

text: Facts may be understood as information, which makes a true sentence true: "A fact is, traditionally, the worldly correlate of a true proposition, a state of affairs whose obtaining makes that proposition true." Facts may also be understood as those things to which a true sentence refers. The statement "Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system" is "about" the fact that Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system.


title: Fact

text: Pascal Engel's version of the correspondence theory of truth explains that what makes a sentence true is that it "corresponds" to a fact. This theory presupposes the existence of an objective world.


title: Fact

text: The Slingshot argument claims to show that all true statements stand for the same thing, the truth value "true". If this argument holds, and facts are taken to be what true statements stand for, then one arrives at the counter-intuitive conclusion that there is only one fact: "the truth".


title: Fact

text: Any non-trivial true statement about reality is necessarily an abstraction composed of a complex of objects and properties or relations."Facts possess internal structure, being complexes of objects and properties or relations" For example, the fact described by the true statement "Paris is the capital city of France" implies that there is such a place as Paris, there is such a place as France, there are such things as capital cities, as well as that France has a government, that the government of France has the power to define its capital city, and that the French government has chosen Paris to be the capital, that there is such a thing as a "place" or a "government", and so on. The verifiable accuracy of all of these assertions, if facts themselves, may coincide to create the fact, that Paris is the capital of France.


title: Fact

text: Difficulties arise, however, in attempting to identify the constituent parts of negative, modal, disjunctive, or moral facts.


title: Fact

text: Moral philosophers since David Hume have debated whether values are objective, and thus factual. In "A Treatise of Human Nature" Hume pointed out there is no obvious way for a series of statements about what "ought" to be the case to be derived from a series of statements of what "is" the case. This is called the is–ought distinction. Those who insist there is a logical gulf between facts and values, such that it is fallacious to attempt to derive values (e.g., "it is good to give food to hungry people") from facts (e.g., "people will die if they can't eat"), include G. E. Moore, who called attempting to do so the naturalistic fallacy.


title: Fact

text: Factuality—what has occurred—can also be contrasted with counterfactuality: what "might have" occurred, but did not. A counterfactual conditional or subjunctive conditional is a conditional (or "if–then") statement indicating what "would be" the case if events had been other than they were. For example, "If Alexander had lived, his empire would have been greater than Rome." This contrasts with an indicative conditional, which indicates what "is" (in fact) the case if its antecedent "is" (in fact) true—for example, "If you drink this, it will make you well." Such sentences are important to modal logic, especially since the development of possible world semantics.


title: Fact

text: In mathematics, a "fact" is a statement (called a theorem) that can be proven by logical argument from certain axioms and definitions.


title: Fact

text: The definition of a "scientific fact" is different from the definition of fact, as it implies knowledge. A scientific fact is the result of a repeatable careful observation or measurement by experimentation or other means, also called empirical evidence. These are central to building scientific theories. Various forms of observation and measurement lead to fundamental questions about the scientific method, and the scope and validity of scientific reasoning.


title: Fact

text: In the most basic sense, a "scientific fact" is an objective and verifiable observation, in contrast with a "hypothesis" or "theory", which is intended to explain or interpret facts.


title: Fact

text: Various scholars have offered significant refinements to this basic formulation. Philosophers and scientists are careful to distinguish between: 1) "states of affairs" in the external world and 2) "assertions" of fact that may be considered relevant in scientific analysis. The term is used in both senses in the philosophy of science.


title: Fact

text: Scholars and clinical researchers in both the social and natural sciences have written about numerous questions and theories that arise in the attempt to clarify the fundamental nature of scientific fact. Pertinent issues raised by this inquiry include:


title: Fact

text: Consistent with the idea of confirmation holism, some scholars assert "fact" to be necessarily "theory-laden" to some degree. Thomas Kuhn points out that knowing what facts to measure, and how to measure them, requires the use of other theories. For example, the age of fossils is based on radiometric dating, which is justified by reasoning that radioactive decay follows a Poisson process rather than a Bernoulli process. Similarly, Percy Williams Bridgman is credited with the methodological position known as operationalism, which asserts that all observations are not only influenced, but necessarily defined, by the means and assumptions used to measure them.


title: Fact

text: Apart from the fundamental inquiry into the nature of scientific fact, there remain the practical and social considerations of how fact is investigated, established, and substantiated through the proper application of the scientific method. Scientific facts are generally believed independent of the observer: no matter who performs a scientific experiment, all observers agree on the outcome.


title: Fact

text: In addition to these considerations, there are the social and institutional measures, such as peer review and accreditation, that are intended to promote "factual accuracy" among other interests in scientific study.


title: Fact

text: A common rhetorical cliché states, "History is written by the winners." This phrase suggests but does not examine the use of facts in the writing of history.


title: Fact

text: E. H. Carr in his 1961 volume "What is History?" argues that the inherent biases from the gathering of facts makes the objective truth of any historical perspective idealistic and impossible. Facts are, "like fish in the Ocean," of which we may only happen to catch a few, only an indication of what is below the surface. Even a dragnet cannot tell us for certain what it would be like to live below the Ocean's surface. Even if we do not discard any facts (or fish) presented, we will always miss the majority; the site of our fishing, the methods undertaken, the weather and even luck play a vital role in what we will catch. Additionally, the composition of history is inevitably made up by the compilation of many different biases of fact finding – all compounded over time. He concludes that for a historian to attempt a more objective method, one must accept that history can only aspire to a conversation of the present with the past – and that one's methods of fact gathering should be openly examined. The set of highlighted historical facts, and their interpretations, therefore changes over time, and reflect present consensuses.


title: Fact

text: This section of the article emphasizes common law jurisprudence as primarily represented in Anglo-American–based legal tradition. Nevertheless, the principles described herein have analogous treatment in other legal systems such as civil law systems as well.


title: Fact

text: In most common law jurisdictions, the general concept and analysis of fact reflects fundamental principles of jurisprudence, and is supported by several well-established standards. Matters of fact have various formal definitions under common law jurisdictions.


title: Fact

text: A party (e.g., plaintiff) to a civil suit generally must clearly state the relevant allegations of fact that form the basis of a claim. The requisite level of precision and particularity of these allegations varies, depending on the rules of civil procedure and jurisdiction. Parties who face uncertainties regarding facts and circumstances attendant to their side in a dispute may sometimes invoke alternative pleading. In this situation, a party may plead separate sets of facts that when considered together may be contradictory or mutually exclusive. This seemingly logically-inconsistent presentation of facts may be necessary as a safeguard against contingencies such as "res judicata" that would otherwise preclude presenting a claim or defense that depends on a particular interpretation of the underlying facts and ruling of the court.


title: Plymouth shooting

text: The Plymouth shooting occurred in Keyham, Plymouth, Devon, England, United Kingdom, on 12 August 2021. The gunman, 22-year-old Jake Davison, shot and killed five people and injured two others before fatally shooting himself. Devon and Cornwall Police have not identified a motive.


title: Plymouth shooting

text: In response, the Home Office announced that it would issue updated guidelines for firearms licence applications.


title: Plymouth shooting

text: In the United Kingdom, it is necessary to have either a firearms certificate (FAC) or a shotgun certificate (SGC) to legally own most classes of permitted firearms; in Great Britain, certificates are granted by the local policing authority. For an FAC, the applicant must demonstrate a good reason for owning the particular firearm, as well as having certified secure storage, while an SGC only requires the latter; both types of certificate require a background check.


title: Plymouth shooting

text: At 18:11 BST (UTC+1) on 12 August 2021, Devon and Cornwall Police received reports of shots having been fired inside a house on Biddick Drive, a residential street in the Keyham area of Plymouth; within the house, 22-year-old Jake Davison had killed his 51-year-old mother after an argument. He then left the house with what witnesses described as a pump-action shotgun, and shot and killed a 3-year-old girl and her 43-year-old father in the street. Next, he injured a 53-year-old woman and her 33-year-old son in a house on Biddick Drive, before shooting and killing a 59-year-old man in a nearby park.


title: Plymouth shooting

text: Davison then went to Henderson Place, where he shot and fatally wounded a 66-year-old woman; he told a passing resident that there was "nothing to worry about, mate". Shortly before killing himself, Davison was described as "walking like [he] was on patrol, like a soldier with a gun" and with a "blank expression". At 18:23, Davison shot himself on Henderson Place.


title: Plymouth shooting

text: Devon and Cornwall Police and the South Western Ambulance Service were alerted to the incident at 18:11 and 18:12, respectively. The ambulance service responded with a significant number of resources, including hazardous area response teams, ambulances, specialist paramedics, and air ambulances. According to Devon and Cornwall Police, officers attended the scene within six minutes of the emergency calls, and they subsequently found the bodies of Davison and four of the victims. They described the events as a "serious firearms incident" and established thirteen different crime scenes within the cordoned area.


title: Plymouth shooting

text: The 66-year-old female victim was treated at Henderson Place for gunshot wounds but later died in Derriford Hospital. The two survivors received significant but non-life-threatening injuries. At 21:25, the police reported they believed the incident to be contained.


title: Plymouth shooting

text: The gunman was named by police as Jake Davison, a 22-year-old from Plymouth and an apprentice crane operator at security and defence company Babcock International. The chief constable of Devon and Cornwall Police, Shaun Sawyer, said that Davison's motive was unknown, but that police believed the shooting was a "domestic incident [that] spilled into the streets". He stated that police were not considering terrorism as a motive, although commentators have questioned whether Davison's ideologies would constitute terrorism.


title: Plymouth shooting

text: Davison was diagnosed with autism and ADHD as a child and attended Mount Tamar school for special needs children. He was a regular visitor to Shetland, where he spent long periods of time with his mother's relatives; it was there that initial concerns were raised about his mental state. In 2016, Davison was reported to the police for allegedly attacking a man and his pregnant girlfriend not far from where the shooting would occur; Davison was warned by police but not prosecuted. A close source to the family said that Davison had recently deteriorated after suffering from mental health problems for most of his life, and that his mother was "begging for help from the authorities but nobody did a welfare check". During the UK's COVID-19 lockdowns in the eighteen months before the shooting, Davison had accessed a local mental health support charity.


title: Plymouth shooting

text: Davison had been licensed to own a firearm since 2018, and police believe he used a legally-held firearm in the shooting. Police had removed his shotgun and licence in December 2020 following an assault allegation described as "a row with two youths", but the weapons were returned in early July 2021, a month before the killings, after he completed an anger management course. Following Devon and Cornwall Police's self-referral to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), the agency investigated the service's previous dealings with Davison, its decision to grant him a firearms licence and the decision to reinstate the licence, and the decision to return his gun after it was temporarily revoked.


title: Plymouth shooting

text: Davison uploaded videos to YouTube under the name "Professor Waffle". His videos included references to "inceldom", the black pill worldview and general nihilism. In his last video, Davison described himself as "beaten down and defeated by life" and said: "I wouldn't clarify myself as an incel but have talked to people similar to me who have had nothing but themselves."


title: Plymouth shooting

text: Davison expressed misogynist and homophobic views, and used Reddit to share hostility and resentment towards his mother, who had repeatedly attempted to obtain – and persuade him to receive – treatment for his mental health. On Reddit, he subscribed to incel-related content, and other clips of his videos contained further references to, and used terminology of, that community. In one clip, Davison discussed "missing out on a teenage romance" and referred to "Chads", slang for confident, sexually active men. He said he had considered using drugs to "make up for that missed teenage experience" and that, "I have a feeling like I missed that boat and it's never coming back".


title: Plymouth shooting

text: Davison was also active in gun enthusiast subreddits. Reddit suspended his account a day before the shooting for making inappropriate comments to a 16-year-old female American Reddit user. He had initially been friendly with the girl and had discussed having a relationship with her, before the conversation soured and he began to repeatedly ask to have sex with her. According to the report, the girl complained that he had repeatedly asked her to date him, travel to see him, and have sex with him, and had made comments about how sex with someone of her age is acceptable because it was legal in the UK. Various users urged her to report Davison to the police, but she wrote that she did not know what to do and had been advised by her mother not to get involved.


title: Plymouth shooting

text: Davison's mother had begun to argue with her son over his sexist views and diatribes on women in the months before the shooting. A neighbour said Davison and his mother "used to be close [...] but then his views changed and he went against women and he became a misogynist [...] they clashed a lot about that." Davison had a physical confrontation with his father shortly before the shooting. His Facebook and YouTube accounts were terminated in line with the sites' behavioural policies.


title: Plymouth shooting

text: An evening vigil was held on 13 August at North Down Crescent Park in Keyham. Flags in the city were flown at half-mast, and Smeaton's Tower was lit up that evening as a mark of respect.


title: Plymouth shooting

text: Books of condolence were made available in several locations, along with an online book on the Plymouth City Council's website. Several memorials were placed at areas close to the crime scenes, where flowers and cards were laid, as well as further impromptu vigils being held by residents.


title: Plymouth shooting

text: On 19 August the inquest into the deaths of Davison and his five victims was opened in Plymouth. The investigation, codenamed Operation Lillypad, was led by Detective Inspector Steve Hambly. Hambly said that Davison's mother was the only victim known to the attacker. The IOPC investigated why Davison had a shotgun licence despite concerns around his mental health, and the senior coroner asked the office to examine the case of Michael Atherton who in 2012 killed his partner, her sister, her niece and himself despite having a history of domestic abuse and self-harm threats.


title: Plymouth shooting

text: On 6 October 2021, the IOPC issued disciplinary notices to two members of Devon and Cornwall Police over their handling of Davison's certificate for his shotgun, which he used for clay pigeon shooting.


title: Plymouth shooting

text: On 15 August 2021, the British government announced that it would issue guidance to require police to investigate social media posts of firearms licence applicants and current holders. Before the new guidance is published, the Home Office asked all police services in England and Wales immediately "to review their practices and whether any existing licences need to be looked at again".


title: Plymouth shooting

text: In February 2022 Davison's father Mark was interviewed for the BBC and said he was "sorry" and "ashamed" of his son's actions. He said that he had told police, in 2017, that he did not think his son should be allowed a shotgun.


title: Sidney Luft

text: Michael Sidney Luft (November 2, 1915 – September 15, 2005) was an American show business figure, the second husband of actress Lynn Bari, and later the third husband of actress and singer Judy Garland.


title: Sidney Luft

text: Luft was born in New York City, the son of Leonora (Meyers) and Norbert Luft, who were Jewish immigrants from Russia and Germany. His family moved to Westchester County, where he grew up.


title: Sidney Luft

text: Luft was once an amateur boxer and bar-room brawler and had the nickname "One-Punch Luft". He was a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force and in the early 1940s was a test pilot for Douglas Aircraft Company.


title: Sidney Luft

text: He is credited with keeping Judy Garland working and with setting up a deal with Warner Bros. to bankroll his wife's comeback film, a 1954 musical remake of "A Star Is Born" plus future projects. Luft's name is on the film's credits as producer. "A Star Is Born" was a major critical success. During its first release, the picture proved to be very popular with audiences and grossed an enormous amount of money, but it failed to recoup its production costs. This was considered a major factor in Garland not winning the Academy Award that year for Best Actress. As a result, the studio canceled the Luft–Garland contract, which would have starred Judy in two additional Warner films and given Luft a berth at Warner's as a producer.


title: Sidney Luft

text: Sidney Luft died on September 15, 2005, in Santa Monica, California, apparently of a heart attack, at the age of 89.


title: Robert Curthose

text: Robert Curthose, or Robert II of Normandy ( 1051 – 3 February 1134, ), was the eldest son of William the Conqueror and succeeded his father as Duke of Normandy in 1087, reigning until 1106. Robert was also an unsuccessful claimant to the throne of the Kingdom of England. The epithet "Curthose" had its origins in the Norman French word "courtheuse" 'short stockings' and was apparently derived from a nickname given to Robert by his father; the chroniclers William of Malmesbury and Orderic Vitalis reported that William the Conqueror had derisively called Robert "brevis-ocrea" ("short boot").


title: Robert Curthose

text: Robert's reign as Duke is noted for the discord with his brothers William II and Henry I in England. Robert mortgaged his duchy to finance his participation in the First Crusade, where he was an important commander. Eventually, his disagreements with Henry I led to defeat in the Battle of Tinchebray in 1106, and lifelong captivity, with Normandy temporarily absorbed as a possession of England.


title: Robert Curthose

text: Robert was the eldest son of William the Conqueror, the first Norman king of England, and Matilda of Flanders. Estimates of Robert's birth-date range between 1051 and 1053. As a child he was betrothed to Margaret, the heiress of Maine, but she died before they could be wed, and Robert did not marry until his late forties. In his youth he was reported to be courageous and skilful in military exercises. He was, however, also prone to laziness and weakness of character that discontented nobles and the King of France exploited to stir discord with his father William. He was unsatisfied with the share of power allotted to him and quarrelled with his father and brothers fiercely. In 1063, his father made him the Count of Maine in view of his engagement to Margaret, and Robert may have had independent rule in Maine. The county remained under Norman control until 1069 when the county revolted and reverted to Hugh V of Maine.


title: Robert Curthose

text: In 1077, Robert instigated his first insurrection against his father as the result of a prank played by his younger brothers William Rufus and Henry, who had dumped a full chamber-pot over his head. Robert was enraged and, urged on by his companions, started a brawl with his brothers that was only interrupted by the intercession of their father. Feeling that his dignity was wounded, Robert was further angered when King William failed to punish his brothers. The next day Robert and his followers attempted to seize the castle of Rouen. The siege failed, but, when King William ordered their arrest, Robert and his companions took refuge with Hugh of Chateauneuf-en-Thymerais. They were forced to flee again when King William attacked their base at Rémalard.


title: Robert Curthose

text: Robert fled to Flanders to the court of his uncle Robert I, Count of Flanders, before plundering the county of the Vexin and causing such mayhem that his father King William allied himself with King Philip I of France to stop his rebellious son. Relations were not helped when King William discovered that his wife, Robert's mother Queen Matilda, was secretly sending her son Robert money. At a battle in January 1079, Robert unhorsed King William in combat and succeeded in wounding him, stopping his attack only when he recognised his father's voice. Humiliated, King William cursed his son. King William then raised the siege and returned to Rouen.


title: Robert Curthose

text: At Easter 1080, father and son were reunited by the efforts of Queen Matilda, and a truce lasted until she died in 1083. Robert seems to have left court soon after the death of his mother and spent several years travelling throughout France, Germany, and Flanders. He visited Italy seeking the hand of the great heiress Matilda of Tuscany (b. 1046) but was unsuccessful. During this period as a wandering knight Robert sired several illegitimate children. His son Richard seems to have spent much of his life at the royal court of his uncle William Rufus. This Richard was killed in a hunting accident in the New Forest in 1100 as was his uncle, King William Rufus, the same year. An illegitimate daughter was later married to Helias of Saint-Saens.


title: Robert Curthose

text: In 1087, the elder William died of wounds suffered from a riding accident during a siege of Mantes. At his death he reportedly wanted to disinherit his eldest son but was persuaded to divide the Norman dominions between his two eldest sons. To Robert he granted the Duchy of Normandy and to William Rufus he granted the Kingdom of England. The youngest son Henry was given money to buy land. Of the two elder sons Robert was considered to be much the weaker and was generally preferred by the nobles who held lands on both sides of the English Channel since they could more easily circumvent his authority.


title: Robert Curthose

text: At the time of their father's death the two brothers made an agreement to be each other's heir. However, this peace lasted less than a year when barons joined with Robert to displace Rufus in the Rebellion of 1088. It was not a success, in part because Robert never showed up to support the English rebels.


title: Robert Curthose

text: Robert took as his close adviser Ranulf Flambard, who had been previously a close adviser to his father. Flambard later became an astute but much-disliked financial adviser to William Rufus until the latter's death in 1100.


title: Robert Curthose

text: In 1096, Robert formed an army and left for the Holy Land on the First Crusade. At the time of his departure he was reportedly so poor that he often had to stay in bed for lack of clothes. To raise money for the crusade he mortgaged his duchy to his brother William for the sum of 10,000 marks.


title: Robert Curthose

text: When William II died on 2 August 1100, Robert was on his return journey from the Crusade and was about to marry a wealthy young bride to raise funds to buy back his duchy. As a result of Robert's absence, his brother Henry was able to seize the crown of England for himself.


title: Robert Curthose

text: Upon his return, Robert—urged by Flambard and several Anglo-Norman barons—claimed the English crown, on the basis of the short-lived agreement of 1087, and in 1101 led an invasion to oust his brother Henry. He landed at Portsmouth with his army, but the lack of popular support among the English (Anselm, the archbishop of Canterbury, was decidedly against him and the Charter of Liberties issued at Henry's coronation was well liked) as well as Robert's own mishandling of the invasion tactics enabled Henry to resist the invasion. Robert was forced by diplomacy to renounce his claim to the English throne in the Treaty of Alton. It is said that Robert was a brilliant field commander but a terrible strategist in the First Crusade.


title: Robert Curthose

text: In 1105, however, Robert's continual stirring of discord with his brother in England as well as civil disorder in Normandy itself prompted Henry to invade Normandy. Orderic reports on an incident at Easter 1105 when Robert was supposed to hear a sermon by the venerable Serlo, Bishop of Sées. Robert spent the night before sporting with harlots and jesters, and while he lay in bed sleeping off his drunkenness his unworthy friends stole his clothes. He awoke to find himself naked and had to remain in bed and missed the sermon.


title: Robert Curthose

text: In 1106, Henry defeated Robert's army decisively at the Battle of Tinchebray and claimed Normandy as a possession of the English crown, a situation that endured for almost a century. Captured after the battle, Robert was imprisoned in Devizes Castle in Wiltshire for twenty years before being moved to Cardiff.


title: Robert Curthose

text: In 1134, Robert died in Cardiff Castle in his early eighties. Robert Curthose, sometime Duke of Normandy, eldest son of the Conqueror, was buried in the abbey church of St. Peter in Gloucester. The exact place of his burial is difficult to establish—legend states that he requested to be buried before the High Altar. His effigy carved in bog oak, however, lies on a mortuary chest decorated with the attributed arms of the Nine Worthies (missing one—Joshua, and replaced with the arms of Edward the Confessor). The effigy dates from about 100 years after his death and the mortuary chest much later. The church subsequently has become Gloucester Cathedral.


title: Robert Curthose

text: Robert married Sybilla of Conversano, daughter of Geoffrey of Brindisi, Count of Conversano (and a grandniece of Robert Guiscard, another Norman duke) on the way back from Crusade; they had one child:


title: Robert Curthose

text: Sybilla, who was admired and often praised by chroniclers of the time, died shortly after the birth of her son. William of Malmesbury claims she died as a result of binding her breasts too tightly; both Robert of Torigny and Orderic Vitalis suggest she was murdered by a cabal of noblewomen led by her husband's mistress, Agnes Giffard.


title: Robert Curthose

text: Robert also had at least three illegitimate children—Richard, who died hunting in the New Forest in May 1100; William, a full brother of Richard; and a daughter, who married Helias of Saint-Saens. William went to the Holy Land after 1106 and was named lord of Tortosa, but disappears from the historical record after 1110.


title: Begotten (film)

text: Begotten is a 1989 American film written, produced, edited, shot, and directed by Edmund Elias Merhige. It stars Brian Salsberg, Donna Dempsy, Stephen Charles Barry, and members of Merhige's theatre company, Theatreofmaterial. The film contains no dialogue and employs a style similar in some ways to early silent films. Its enigmatic plot, drawn from elements of various creation myths, opens with the suicide of a godlike figure and the births of Mother Earth and the Son of Earth, who set out on a journey of death and rebirth through a barren landscape. According to art historian Scott MacDonald, the film's allegorical qualities and purposeful ambiguity invite multiple interpretations.


title: Begotten (film)

text: "Begotten" was first conceived as an experimental theatre piece with dance and live musical accompaniment, but Merhige switched to film after deciding that his vision would be too expensive to achieve as a production for live audiences. Antonin Artaud and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche were major influences on "Begotten", as Merhige believed their ideas and theories had not been explored in film to their full extent. The film's visual style was inspired by Georges Franju's documentary short "Blood of the Beasts", Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai", Stan Brakhage's "The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes", and the German Expressionist film "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari". "Begotten" was shot on location in New York and New Jersey over a period generally thought to have been three and a half years although, in an interview, Merhige said filming took only five and a half months.


title: Begotten (film)

text: Once the film was finished, Merhige spent the next two years trying to find a distributor willing to market it. Following its debut at the Montreal World Film Festival, it was screened at the San Francisco International Film Festival, where it was seen by film critics Tom Luddy and Peter Scarlet. They brought it to the attention of fellow critic Susan Sontag, whose enthusiastic praise and private screenings of the film in her own home were instrumental to its eventual release. Though largely ignored by main-stream critics, it attained cult film status and influenced several avant-garde film-makers, visual artists and musicians. The film's scarcity on home video prompted its fans to spread their own bootleg copies, a phenomenon described as a "copy-cult" by film studies scholar Ernest Mathijs. As the first part of a planned series, "Begotten" was followed in 2006 by "Din of Celestial Birds", a short sequel with the theory of evolution as its dominant theme.


title: Begotten (film)

text: Inside a small shack, a robed figure dubbed "God Killing Himself" in the film's credits disembowels himself using a straight razor. After removing some of his internal organs, the robed god dies. A woman, Mother Earth, then emerges from his mutilated remains. She brings the corpse to arousal and uses his semen to impregnate herself. Time passes and Mother Earth, now visibly pregnant, stands beside the coffin of the dead god. Wandering off into a vast and barren landscape, Mother Earth later gives birth to Son of Earth, a malformed convulsing man. He is soon abandoned by his mother, who leaves him to his own devices.


title: Begotten (film)

text: After an untold period of time wandering across the barren landscape, the Son of Earth encounters a group of faceless nomads who seize him by his umbilical cord. Upon being captured, the Son of Earth begins to vomit up what appears to be organs, which the nomads excitedly accept as gifts. They then throw the man into a fire pit, where he burns to death. Son of Earth is resurrected by Mother Earth, who comforts her newly reborn offspring before they continue together across the barren landscape. The nomads soon return and proceed to attack the Son of Earth as Mother Earth stands in a trance-like state. Turning their attention to her, the nomads knock her to the ground, rape, and murder her as her son watches helplessly near-by.


title: Begotten (film)

text: Once the nomads have left, a group of robed figures arrive to carry away Mother Earth's mutilated, disemboweled remains. The group returns to murder and disembowel her son, placing pieces of both mother and son into jars, which they bury into the crust of the earth. As time passes, the burial site soon becomes lush with flowers. A montage of grainy photographs depicting God Killing Himself are shown. In the final scene, Mother Earth and her son appear in a flash-back, wandering through a forested path.


title: Begotten (film)

text: Members of Merhige's theater company Theatreofmaterial – which included Adolpho Vargas, Arthur Streeter, Daniel Harkins, Erik Slavin, James Gandia, Michael Phillips, and Terry Andersen provided additional credits for other characters in the film such as the Nomads and Robed Figures.


title: Begotten (film)

text: Critics have identified several major themes in "Begotten". In interviews, Merhige himself has acknowledged that he intentionally incorporated these themes into the film, while also inviting viewers to form their own interpretations of the film.


title: Begotten (film)

text: Several critics have noted that "Begotten" contains an underlying theme of death and rebirth, recurring throughout most of the director's works. In an interview with Marty Mapes of "Movie Habit", Merhige stated, "I've always believed in the continuity of consciousness. I don't think the body dying means it's over. It just means that there's a transformation taking place. So what we call physical death is not something that I think is some sorrowful loss."


title: Begotten (film)

text: In her review of Merhige's third film "Suspect Zero" for the "Los Angeles Times", Elaine Dutka noted that themes of death and rebirth that appeared throughout the director's works might have been inspired by a near-death experience Merhige had suffered during his youth at age nineteen. Author and independent filmmaker John Kenneth Muir pointed out the film's ideas of suffering, death, and rebirth as being exemplified in the Son of Earth's journey. As Muir noted, the character's mistreatment, through various means intentionally drew parallels to mankind's 'painful' toil and reshaping of the earth for the purpose of planting crops, which represented the bringing forth of life through suffering. Muir also pointed out the film's characters as visualized symbols of certain concepts of mankind and the earth itself, with the depictions of life, death, and renewal as representing the four seasons. Film and literary scholar William E.B. Verrone also noted these themes, pointing out that, as the viewers, we are encouraged to mourn the film's characters (father/mother/son) through the agony and torment inflicted upon them. Verrone further elaborates that through these depictions of death and violence, we are then symbolically "offered salvation" in its depiction of the blossoming flowers seen growing on their graves. In the book "Contemporary North American Film Directors: A Wallflower Critical Guide", co-author Jason Wood noted that the film's "evocation of the body as the source of horror and decay" was redolent of surreal works by Luis Buñuel and early David Lynch. Wood also compared the film's grainy look and landscapes to the recurring themes of hopelessness and desolation in the works of Russian filmmaker Aleksandr Sokurov.


title: Begotten (film)

text: Many critics have pointed out the film's incorporation of various religious and mythological themes and events from Christian, Celtic, and Slavic mythology including various Creation myths, Mother Earth, and other religious themes, on which the events that take place in the film are loosely based. Merhige, a firm believer in alchemy and hermeticism, has acknowledged that the film was deliberately arranged to appear as part of a mythology. According to film and literary scholar William E.B. Verrone, "Begotten"s core storyline was a mixture of ancient mythologies that dealt with stories and themes, such as the birth of a divine entity and their subsequent suffering through various means, citing the film as "a cryptic passion play about Earth's birth and torture". Verrone went on to explain that the film's highly symbolic and metaphorical plot was intended to evoke a response different than that offered in more traditional cinematic offerings. Art historian Scott MacDonald pointed out that the film's highly allegorical plot represents many of the popular attitudes towards both the origins of life and religion, which have been put forth over the span of several centuries. MacDonald also interpreted the film's plot as the death of god or deity, and the birth and rape of Nature. In their book "Cult Cinema: An Introduction", film studies scholars Ernest Mathijs and Jamie Sexton noted that the film "makes perhaps the most serious attempt to visualize elements of Dionysian orgiastic cultism in combination with Gnostic and pagan myths". Robert DiMatteo pointed out the film's ritualistic and religious aspects such as the idea of "God's eye".


title: Begotten (film)

text: The film's opening sequence shares many similarities with various creation myths, specifically those in which life is generated from the corpse or dismemberment of an originator deity. Art historian Herbert S. Lindenberger felt that Merhige had reworked myths that social anthropologist and folklorist Sir James Frazer had published during the Victorian era. Lindenberger also noted the film's inclusion of themes taken from Christianity such as the "buried god", his resurrection, and the inclusion of god's mother.


title: Begotten (film)

text: Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" categorized the film as a mixture of ancient mythologies, which were reworked in what she called "visceral, monstrously immediate terms". Film critic Richard Corliss from "Time" pointed out that it contained multiple references to Druidism. Corliss also noted the film's mixture of druidism with several biblical stories such as the Creation (Genesis), the Nativity, and Christ's torture/death.


title: Begotten (film)

text: Merhige was informed by the theories and ideas of Antonin Artaud and Friedrich Nietzsche, which in his opinion had not been developed on film to the fullest extent. His key cinematic influences included Munk, Eisenstein, and Buñuel. In a 1993 interview with art historian Scott MacDonald, Merhige also listed Georges Franju's documentary short "Blood of the Beasts" as an inspiration for the visual style of the film, as well as Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai", Stan Brakhage's "The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes", and the German expressionist film "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari". Merhige also stated that "fine arts had far more of an influence on this project than film. The horrific beauty you find in Hieronymus Bosch or Munch or Goya got to me more than anything."


title: Begotten (film)

text: Critics have identified a variety of other possible influences. Film critic Eric D. Snider has pointed out that David Lynch's "Eraserhead" might also have influenced the film's visual style. While comparing "Begotten"s opening sequence to the eye slicing scene in Buñuel's "Un Chien Andalou", "Film Comment"s Robert DiMatteo also noted Dimitri Kirsanoff's "Ménilmontant", tribal art, ethnographic studies, Tobe Hooper's "Texas Chain Saw Massacre", as well as the paintings of Piero Francesca as possible influences on the film.


title: Begotten (film)

text: "Begotten" was written, produced, and directed by Merhige, with development for the film beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, although some sources list the date as 1984. Merhige had studied at New York State University, and soon developed an interest in the theater after attending several performances while in Manhattan. Merhige would later state in an interview that he had been drawn towards the use of performers creating a highly visualized form of storytelling through dramatic movement to provoke, what Merhige called, "an otherworldly response". He was particularly fascinated by a Japanese dance troupe called Sankai Juku which, the director later learned, consisted of a handful of core members that were well in tune with one another, knowing each other completely on both a professional and personal level. Wanting to accomplish a similar group dynamic, Merhige founded Theatreofmaterial, a small theater production company based in New York City.


title: Begotten (film)

text: After working on several different experimental theater productions, he began developing his next project, which was initially for the theater. As Merhige would later recall, the initial concept for the film was envisioned as a dance production at the Lincoln Center, which would have been set to a live orchestra. It was only after discovering that it would cost a quarter of a million dollars to produce that the decision was made to adapt the script for a motion picture instead of a theater production.


title: Begotten (film)

text: Merhige also wanted to document the company's work, as many of its members were transitioning to other projects. Interviewed in 2013 by horror film magazine "Fangoria", Merhige revealed that the film itself had also been an attempt to document many of the thoughts and ideas he was going through at the time, believing that if he did not "get it out there" they would overwhelm him.


title: Begotten (film)

text: Still only twenty at the time, he wrote the film's script in six months. Before working on "Begotten", he had previously made several short films such as "Implosion" (1983), "Spring Rain" (1984), and "A Taste of Youth" (1985). These were well-received, and gave the director the experience and insight he needed while working on "Begotten". Merhige developed the film's script with members of Theatreofmaterial, who worked as both cast and crew during production. They decided that the film should be silent and that they would strive to evoke what the director called "emotions on the fringes", which they felt were avoided by most directors and actors. In preparation for writing the script, Merhige and members from Theatreofmaterial performed intense, ritual breathing exercises as a group. As Merhige explained, "We would breathe to the point of hysteria and create these moments of panic. Afterwards, we would analyze what the experience was all about. It was an intimate science." He brought portions of the script to the cast members and began a process of rehearsals followed by group discussion and reflection on the material as it took shape. Over a period of four-and-a-half months, the group gradually translated the script's abstract ideas into more concrete, enactable scenes, though Merhige emphasized that the rehearsals were focused on group cohesion rather than precise choreography. Merhige later revealed to "UltraCulture" host Jason Louv that he strove to imbue the film with the same tribal and ritual aspects associated with alchemical and hermetic traditions. To that end he worked closely with the film's cast, experimenting with various techniques such as hypnosis and meditation in order to help the cast achieve a mental state of what he called "universal stream" rather than having the actors simply mimic those aspects.


title: Begotten (film)

text: Principal photography took place in the mid-to-late 1980s, over a period of three-and-a-half months in several different locations. Merhige filled multiple roles in the film's production, including work on cinematography, and special effects, the latter using a 16mm Arriflex camera on black-and-white reversal film. He had previously worked on several short film subjects before developing "Begotten". The opening sequence depicting the robed figure (listed in the credits as "God Killing Himself") disemboweling himself and Mother Earth emerging from his remains was the first to be shot. The sequence was then edited and shown to the cast and crew, whose reactions to the footage was very enthusiastic, with Merhige stating: "it proved to everyone that this "was" an important film, that there really was nothing else like it, and we were actually going to make it happen." Most of the cast and crew were paid little to nothing, with their forms of payment being free room and board, and Merhige himself paying for all of their expenses. In his book "Film Out of Bounds: Essays and Interviews on Non-Mainstream Cinema Worldwide", film historian Matthew Edwards cited "Begotten" as an example of low-budget films outside of Hollywood which displayed unique flair and artistry that rivaled most Hollywood productions, in spite the fact that they were made under a very low budget.


title: Begotten (film)

text: A majority of the film was shot at a construction site on the border between New York City and New Jersey, where Merhige had been given permission to shoot for a period of twenty days when construction crews were not working. Members of the construction site would occasionally lend the film crew a hand by constructing landscapes when certain shots of mountains were needed during a scene. Scenes involving time-lapses of sunrises and sunsets were shot by the director, who spent a couple of days alone in the mountains near Santa Fe or Albuquerque. Funding for the film came from Merhige's grandfather, who had set Merhige up with a trust fund for medical school. Additional costs were paid by Merhige from income he received while working multiple jobs as a special effects artist. Merhige described working on the film as being a powerful, almost ceremonial experience that "changed the lives of all those involved" with the project.


title: Begotten (film)

text: Before "Begotten", Merhige had worked as a special effects designer for various companies, including a brief job for a Disney television series that involved rotoscoping. These jobs had provided him with the technical knowledgeand savingshe needed to handle the film's post-production and visual effects on his own.


title: Begotten (film)

text: The visuals have a decayed look, as if the film itself were an artifact that has been damaged and degraded over vast stretches of time; Merhige said


title: Begotten (film)

text: Before and during the film's shooting, he had experimented with the reel to give it an old, withered look. In one such experiment, he ran the unexposed negative against sandpaper to scratch its surface before shooting. Unsatisfied with the results, Merhige decided to use an optical printer for further processing. The "rephotography" removed almost all of the gray midtones from the footage's visible spectrum, leaving only extreme contrasts of black and white. He was unable to find an optical printer priced within his budget, so he built one himself. He constructed the printer over a period of eight months with spare parts from camera stores and special effects houses where he had worked before.


title: Begotten (film)

text: The process proved to be time-consuming. Each minute of footage generated by the optical printer took between eight and ten hours to complete. Once a test shot was sent to the laboratory for development, minuscule mistakes in calibration would sometimes ruin the shot and require the process to start all over again. Merhige began asking laboratories if they would be willing to adjust their usual development procedures to his custom specifications, but was repeatedly turned away. Eventually, he found a small studio willing to accommodate his requests: Kin-O-Lux Labs, located on Manhattan's 48th Street and owned by a German-American "émigré" named Fred Schreck. Merhige quickly developed a friendship with Schreck, who allowed the director to use the laboratory to develop the footage while teaching him how to develop footage by hand. Schreck's name appears under "special thanks" in the film's end credits. At one point during the editing process, Merhige enlisted his father's input on certain scenes, stating that his father was "very open-minded" to the project. Merhige used similar "rephotography" techniques for segments of his next film, "Shadow of the Vampire".


title: Begotten (film)

text: "Begotten" contains no dialogue. Merhige envisioned "a time that predates spoken language", in which "communication is made on a sensory level." The film's soundtrack including sound effects and music was composed and mixed by Evan Albam. Merhige hired Albam on the recommendation of Tim McCann, the film's assistant director. Albam had a job painting houses at the time and, prior to "Begotten", composed only in his spare time. Merhige and Albam worked together closely in order to find the right balance of visual and audio cues. The soundtrack took a year to complete. The music is ambient and dirge-like, and the sound design is fleshed out by natural sounds such as bird calls, insect noises, and the sounds of a heartbeat.


title: Begotten (film)

text: Once editing for "Begotten" was completed, Merhige spent two years trying to find a distributor willing to market and release it. Merhige screened the film to possible distributors but most refused to release the film as it did not fit into a specific genre, making it difficult to bring the film to market. Merhige later recalled, "When I first went looking for distribution, everyone laughed at me, saying 'We don't know what this is...'" Merhige then took it to a number of museums in hopes of eventually finding a distributor. In the end, only two showed any interest, but both were turned down by Merhige who felt that they would not have been the right choice. As a result, Merhige became very protective of the film, only showing it to people he felt he could trust. Through these private screenings, film critics Tom Luddy and Peter Scarlet would eventually view the film, becoming fascinated by its distinct visual style. Although uncertain how the film would be received, Luddy and Scarlet were able to put together several screenings of the film at the San Francisco International Film Festival, before showing the film to fellow critic Susan Sontag. Sontag, who set up a private screening at her home for twenty of her closest friends, would become one of the "Begotten"s leading advocates and instrumental for its eventual theatrical release. Sontag later brought a copy of the film to the Berlin Film Festival where she informally screened it to interested cinéastes, proclaiming it to be an artistic masterpiece. During one of Sontag's screenings, it was supposedly viewed by director Werner Herzog, whom Merhige later claimed was "very supportive of the film".


title: Begotten (film)

text: Unable to find a distributor, "Begotten" did not attain either wide or limited theatrical release. However, it became a popular underground film, as a film released outside of conventional commercial channels, especially one with subversive or transgressive content. Lacking a standard theatrical release, Merhige booked one-off screenings at various film festivals and art museums.


title: Begotten (film)

text: The earliest public screening took place at the Goethe-Institut in Montreal on October 24, 1989, as part of the Montreal World Film Festival. It had three screenings from May 57 at the 1990 San Francisco International Film Festival, marking its premiere in the United States. It also premiered later that year in New York at the Museum of Modern Art, on October 22 with Merhige introducing the film, followed by a post-screening discussion with the audience. New York City's Film Forum would also screen the film on June 5, 1991. It was exhibited at the Stadtkino Theater in Vienna in 1992, as a part of a retrospective of American independent cinema titled "Unknown Territories".


title: Begotten (film)

text: It screened at the Berlin Film Festival in the early to mid1990s, and on October 20, 2014, was shown at Brooklyn's Spectacle Theater as a part of its fourth annual "Spectober" film event. The film appeared at the third annual horror film festival SpectreFest on October 28, 2015 along with its spiritual sequel "Din of Celestial Birds" followed by an onstage discussion with Merhige. The film was shown at the Music Box Theatre in Midtown Manhattan on September 25, 2016, during its 25th Anniversary celebration, where it was screened from Merhige's personal 16mm print. It was viewed as a double-feature alongside the director's other film "Shadow of the Vampire", and was followed by a Q&A with Merhige. The film was later screened at the Short Film Festival in London on January 8, 2017, where it was shown again in its original 16mm format, accompanied by a live music score from the film. It was screened on October 17, 2019 at the Rice Media Center, as part of a celebration of "Low-Fi" Analog film series.


title: Begotten (film)

text: "Begotten" has received very limited home media distribution after its theatrical release. The film is out of print and difficult to acquire in secondhand markets.


title: Begotten (film)

text: Initially, Merhige did not intend for the film to be released on home video at all, stating in an interview with Scott MacDonald that he had previously hated the concept of home video as a medium. Merhige eventually changed his mind and felt that the original soundtrack mix, with which he had not been completely satisfied, could be enhanced through the medium.


title: Begotten (film)

text: It was later given a very limited DVD release by World Artists on February 20, 2001 and included a souvenir booklet, the original theatrical trailer, rare and never-before-seen movie stills, and production photos. World Artists' DVD release of the film was listed by "Film Comment"s Gavin Smith as the ninth of his "Top 10 DVD Picks".


title: Begotten (film)

text: Due to the film's severely limited availability on home media, its fans began to spread it through bootleg copies and digital piracy. The circulation of unlicensed copies has almost certainly overtaken legitimate distribution in volume. The film is typically encountered via ambiguously legal methods, a situation whichaccording to Mathijs and Sextonfostered a "copy-cult" that enhanced its cult status. The film was reportedly banned in Singapore due to its graphic and disturbing content.


title: Begotten (film)

text: On July 29, 2016, Merhige announced via Instagram that the film would be released for the first time on Blu-ray in the fall of that year. However, the distribution deal fell through, and a second announcement, during its 25th-anniversary screening alongside "Shadow of the Vampire" at Music Box Theatre in Midtown Manhattan, did not provide a release date either.


title: Begotten (film)

text: "Begotten" has received little to no attention from film critics, with most mainstream reviewers ignoring the film entirely. Merhige was initially afraid that audiences would misunderstand parts, or the entire film altogether, "When I finished the film, I felt sure it would be misunderstood and consigned to the underground again. I see it as a very serious, very beautiful work of art, but when it was first finished, I was always thinking, 'What if everybody just laughs? What if they don't see anything in it?' There is always that possibility." Reactions to the film upon its release were extremely polarized, but Merhige has stated that he remains grateful for starting his career with the film. The limited reviews on the film have been mixed to positive, with some critics calling it a masterpiece, praising the film's unique visual style, and resonating themes; others have criticized these same merits along with its brutal violence and running time.


title: Begotten (film)

text: Susan Sontag—one of the leading advocates for the film—praised it, referring to it as "a metaphysical splatter film" and "one of the 10 most important films of modern times". Marc Savlov from the "Austin Chronicle" called the film "Experimental, haunting, dreamlike, and intentionally confounding", also citing that the film's grainy visuals, and horrific imagery as having an influence on the VHS sequences in "The Ring" series, and the works of Guy Maddin. Adrian Halen from "Horror News.net" gave the film a positive review, stating the film's use of symbolism from Christianity and Egyptian mythology, as well as the ambiguity of what was displayed on the screen, created a unique viewing experience that was admittedly not always easy to digest. Jonathan Rosenbaum at the "Chicago Reader" called it a "remarkable if extremely upsetting" film, praised the originality of its visuals, but cautioned that "squeamish" viewers "should avoid this like the plague". David Sterritt from "The Christian Science Monitor" offered the film similar praise, stating that the film 'strongly recalls the work of Samuel Beckett's stark novel "How It Is". Sterritt also noted the film's claustrophobic feelings, and dark narrative, calling it 'a disturbing, yet entrancing experience'. Dennis Schwartz from "Ozus' World Movie Reviews" awarded the film a grade B+, praising the film's visual aesthetic, and comparing the film's graphic imagery to paintings by Francis Bacon. Reviewing Film Forum's 1991 screening, Joe Kane of the "New York Daily News", while stating that he felt the film would have been more effective at a shorter running time, he praised the film's minimalist soundtrack, visuals, and its subversion of traditional narrative structure. Mexican film critic Marco González Ambriz called the film "magnificent" and a must-see "for anyone interested in the cinematic avant-garde", although he also noted that many viewers would likely find the film unbearable. Reviewing the film for arts and culture magazine "Film Comment" gave the film significant praise, calling the opening sequence "a triumph of lyrical grotesquerie", and compared the film to the avant-garde works of Maya Deren, and Stan Brakhage.


title: Begotten (film)

text: The film was not without its detractors. Author and independent filmmaker John Kenneth Muir awarded the film a mixed rating of two and a half out of a possible four stars, calling it "an experimental, one-of-a-kind cinematic experience". In his review, Muir praised the film's originality and powerful imagery, while criticizing the running time as being too long.


title: Begotten (film)

text: Janet Maslin from "The New York Times" criticized the film for being too grotesque, writing "Mr. Merhige's concentration, while impressive in its way, seems almost entirely self-contained, with little effort to engage an audience on even the level of myth."


title: Begotten (film)

text: "Begotten" has gradually developed a cult following over the years and is considered by some to be the director's masterpiece. As one film critic noted, "Begotten" "earned its reputation as an endlessly provocative and mystifying experience always centuries ahead of the rest of American cinema". It was listed in the 2011 book "100 Cult Films" by Ernest Mathijs and Xavier Mendik over Mendik's objections, as he felt its following was too small to merit inclusion. However, it ultimately made it in because, to Mathijs, its following represented "the real sectarian cult; it's a very small committed group of people. It's like a secret handshake that goes worldwide. If you've seen "Begotten", you're in that cult."


title: Begotten (film)

text: In 2012, "Complex" included the film on its list of "50 Most Disturbing Movies". Sarah Gibson from Highsnobiety listed it in her "10 of the Most Damaged and Disturbing Movies Ever Made". It was placed at #10 on AskMen's "10 Hard-To-Stomach Horror Movies", stating that the film was "so miserable that it likely wouldn't have seen the light of day were it not for Susan Sontag". "Taste of Cinema.com" listed it at #13 in its "20 Most Disturbing Movies of All Time", summarizing, ""Begotten" possesses a haunting, atmospherically visceral quality that has yet to be surpassed... Combine Merhige's avant-garde film style with sequences of torture and unsettling imagery, and you get one of the most shocking experimental pictures of all time." It was placed at #4 on "Nylon" "8 Most Disturbing Horror Films Ever Made". In his article "10 Horror Movies Too Intense Even for Halloween", "Screen Rant"s Jason Wojnar ranked the film at #8, citing its unsettling imagery, unconventional narrative, and visual style "makes it hard to tell what is even happening during the unsettling events." "Entertainment Weekly" included the film in its "13 of the Most Disturbingand Critically AcclaimedMovies to Ever Hit Theaters", describing it as "kind of like if Alejandro Jodorowsky told the story of creation filtered through the lens of "Eraserhead"." Joblo placed the film at #4 in their list of the "Top Ten Most Disturbing Films Ever", with the author stating that it was their personal favorite out of all the films listed. The website would later place film at #8 in their "Top 10 Trippy Horror Movies You Don't Want to See While Stoned!", referring to it as "[a] relentless visual bombardment of grotesquery". In his 2014 book "Disorders of Magnitude: A Survey of Dark Fantasy", author Jason V. Brock listed the film as his seventh favorite work of radio, film, or television production. Several sources have mistakenly reported that "Time" ranked "Begotten" in its top-ten list of either 1990 or 1991, but the film was not included either year.


title: Begotten (film)

text: The film's critical success provided a foundation for Merhige to continue his filmmaking career. He went on to direct the critically acclaimed "Shadow of the Vampire" and the less well-received "Suspect Zero". Nicolas Cage, a co-producer of "Shadow of the Vampire", advocated hiring Merhige to direct the project based on his positive impression of "Begotten".


title: Begotten (film)

text: Merhige was later hired by singer Marilyn Manson to direct music videos for his songs "Antichrist Superstar" and "Cryptorchid", the latter utilizing imagery that was heavily incorporated from "Begotten". Manson was a huge admirer of "Begotten", having the album's art designer P. R. Brown watch the film for inspiration while developing cover art for the album. Manson personally contacted Merhige to ask him if he would be willing to direct the music video for his song "Cryptorchid". Manson has stated that "Begotten" was played on a loop during the entire recording for his album "Antichrist Superstar". The music video for "Cryptorchid" premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1997 where it won a Golden Gate Certificate of Merit Award. It was subsequently barred from release by Interscope Records, whom Manson claimed were "appalled by it", due to its fascist iconography, namely the Nuremberg rallies, along with U.S. military footage and images of a Ku Klux Klan lynching. "Antichrist Superstar" was also beset with troubles and remained unreleased until it was leaked on YouTube in 2010.


title: Begotten (film)

text: Merhige has since become a prominent member of the theatre, directing numerous stage plays which include "A Dream Play", an adaption of William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and "Waiting for Godot".


title: Begotten (film)

text: Merhige considers "Begotten" the first entry in an incomplete trilogy. It is followed by the 14-minute short film "Din of Celestial Birds". As with "Begotten", Merhige fulfilled multiple roles during its production, functioning as the writer, director, and producer. "Din of Celestial Birds" was funded with assistance from the Q6 production group, a collective of philosophers and artists. His principal inspiration for "Din of Celestial Birds" came from silent films such as Jean Cocteau's "Blood of a Poet" (1930), Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" (1927), and the works of the Lumière brothers.


title: Begotten (film)

text: He intended the short as a depiction of "creation in its simplest and purest form". Focusing on the theory of evolution instead of religion and mythology, the film opens with the text that reads: "Hello and welcome ... do not be afraid ... be comforted ... remember ... our origin...", followed by images depicting the Big Bang. Then, after a hyper-accelerated trip through the evolution of life and the Earth, it culminates in the birth of an embryonic pseudo-humanoid called the Son of Light (Stephen Charles Barry) that reaches to some unknown source.


title: Begotten (film)

text: "Din of Celestial Birds" premiered on Turner Classic Movies on September 15, 2006. The film was also screened at the European Media Art Festival in 2009 as a part of that year's theme, "The Future Lasts Longer Than The Past". It was later screened alongside its predecessor at the SpectreFest Film Festival in 2015.


title: Begotten (film)

text: Since its release, "Begotten" has become a minor influence on several avant-garde and experimental films, and has been cited by several artists as inspiration for some of their works.


title: Begotten (film)

text: Michael Pope's acclaimed 2001 experimental film "Neovoxer" has been compared to "Begotten", featuring a similar visual style and "impressionistic mythology". According to Panos Cosmatos the flashback sequences in his 2010 film "Beyond the Black Rainbow" were directly inspired by "Begotten". When interviewed by CHUD.com's Joshua Miller, Cosmatos stated that he had wanted the flashback sequences to 'have the look and feel of an artifact that was in the process of deterioration', and "Begotten"s visual style was the perfect look for these sequences. Kyle Turner from Mubi.com compared the 2015 experimental film "Ville Marie" as being very similar to Merhige's film in terms of cinematic style, and use of reverse-exposure.


title: Begotten (film)

text: Certain scenes in Can Evrenol's 2015 surrealist horror film "Baskin" were compared to "Begotten". James Quinn's 2017 experimental horror film "Flesh of the Void" was noted by several critics as being similar to Merhige's film in style and narrative. However, Quinn himself stated, in an interview with "Nightmare on Film Street", that he felt his film did not fall into the same category. Certain scenes from Blake Williams' 2018 avant-garde science fiction film "Prototype" were compared to "Begotten" by Glenn Kenny of "The New York Times". Jimmy Joe Roche's 2018 experimental short film, "Skin of Man", was also said to have been influenced by "Begotten".


title: Begotten (film)

text: The film's influence has also extended into the music world. American music artist Zola Jesus listed the film as a major inspiration for her 2017 music album "Okovi", revealing in an interview with "ARTnews" that during development of the album, she would play the film on loop in order to help with "Okovi"s audio and visual aesthetic. For their experimental musical composition "Frankenstein Bemshi!" at the 2018 Rochester Fringe Festival, performers Dave Esposito and G. E. Schwartz mixed portions of "Begotten" with the 1910 film "Frankenstein", accompanied by live guitar music, electronic soundscapes, spoken narration, and with poetry added as text to the movie's image. Lead singer Dimitri Giannopoulos, from the American rock band Horse Jumper Of Love, revealed that the single "Airport", from their 2019 album "So Divine", was partially inspired by "Begotten". Heavy metal magazine "Decibel" compared the music video for the Texas gothic rock band Sword Collector's single "Inherit the Scepter" to "Begotten" and Ari Aster's 2019 folk horror film "Midsommar".


title: Your Song

text: "Your Song" is a song written by English musician Elton John and songwriter Bernie Taupin, and performed by John. It was John's first international Top 10 chart single.


title: Your Song

text: "Your Song" was first released by American rock band Three Dog Night in March 1970 as an album track on "It Ain't Easy". John was an opening act for the band at the time and allowed them to record it. They did not release it as a single as they wanted to let John, then an upcoming artist, have a go with it. John's version was recorded at Trident Studios in London in January 1970 and appeared in April as the first cut on his self-titled second studio album. Following "Border Song" as the first album single, "Your Song" was released in the United States in October 1970 as the B-side to "Take Me to the Pilot". Both sides received airplay, but "Your Song" was preferred by disc jockeys and replaced "Take Me to the Pilot" as the A-side, eventually making it to number eight on the "Billboard" chart. The song also peaked at number 7 on the UK Singles Chart, as well as charting in the top 10 in several other countries.


title: Your Song

text: In 1998, "Your Song" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2004, the song was placed at number 136 on "Rolling Stone"s list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", 137 in its 2010 list, and 202 in its 2021 list. The song is listed among the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. A demo version was included in John's 1990 box set album "To Be Continued". In 2017, the song was voted by the British public as "The Nation's Favourite Elton John Song" in a UK-wide poll for ITV.


title: Your Song

text: The song has been covered by a number of artists, including Rod Stewart, Lady Gaga and Ellie Goulding. The song was also covered by Ewan McGregor in the 2001 musical film "Moulin Rouge!" and by Taron Egerton in the 2019 film "Rocketman". In 2018, the song was certified 2× Platinum by the RIAA.


title: Your Song

text: One widespread story is that Bernie Taupin wrote the song's lyrics after breakfast one morning on the roof of 20 Denmark Street, London, where John worked for a music publishing firm as an office boy, hence the line "I sat on the roof and kicked off the moss." However, Taupin has denied this, pointing out that John had stopped working there by the time they met. According to Taupin, "I scribbled the lyric down on a lined notepad at the kitchen table of Elton's mother's apartment in the London suburb of Northwood Hills, breakfast time sometime in 1969. That’s it. Plain and simple."


title: Your Song

text: The instrumental focus is on John's Leon Russell-influenced piano work, along with acoustic guitar, Paul Buckmaster's string accompaniment, and a shuffling rhythm section.


title: Your Song

text: The lyrics express the romantic thoughts of an innocent person. John sings a straightforward love-song lyric at the beginning: "It's a little bit funny this feeling inside / I'm not one of those who can easily hide / I don't have much money, but boy, if I did / I'd buy a big house where we both could live." At times the self-deprecating narrator stumbles to get out his feelings, which despite being a melodramatic device, AllMusic calls "effective and sweet":


title: Your Song

text: "Your Song" was the inspiration for the song "We All Fall in Love Sometimes" on John's 1975 album "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy".


title: Your Song

text: "Your Song" was praised by critics upon its release and in subsequent years, and is widely regarded as one of John's greatest songs. Writing in "NME" on its release, Derek Johnson wrote, "The song itself is glowing and strangely haunting, the scoring is smooth and delicate and the performance is symptomatic of a new era in pop idols." Bill Janovitz from AllMusic described it as a "near-perfect song".


title: Your Song

text: John Mendelsohn from "Rolling Stone" called the song a "pretty McCartney-esque ballad". In the 2019 book "Elton John: Every Album, Every Song – 1969–1979", author Peter Kearns made the following quote in reference to "Your Song". "The words securely insulate themselves against possible criticism by admitting their ineptitude for the task at hand".


title: Your Song

text: In 2018, "The Guardian" ranked the song number four on their list of the 50 greatest Elton John songs, and in 2022, "Billboard" ranked the song number two on their list of the 75 greatest Elton John songs.


title: Your Song

text: "Your Song" rose to number eight on the "Billboard" Hot 100 and number seven on the UK Singles Chart by January 1971. In 2002, John re-recorded the song as a duet with opera singer Alessandro Safina for the first Sport Relief charity telethon and released it on 15 July 2002; this version reached number four in the UK. In the US it was certified Gold and Platinum on 13 December 2012 by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales of over one million digital downloads. On 23 July 2021, it was certified 2× Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), denoting sales in excess of 1,200,000 digital downloads. In the US in April 2018 it was certified 2× Platinum for sales of two million digital downloads by the Recording Industry Association of America.


title: Your Song

text: John has played "Your Song" at almost every live performance during his solo career, and issued several live versions, including with his band, solo on piano and with orchestra. One notable version was during his Central Park concert in 1980, when John was dressed as Donald Duck.


title: Your Song

text: A live version of John's concert with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, recorded on 14 December 1986, was included in his 1987 album Live in Australia with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.


title: Your Song

text: He also performed "Your Song" live with Ronan Keating at Madison Square Garden, New York, in 2000, the recording of which can be found on Keating's 2010 album "Duet". On 20 October 2001, John performed the song with Billy Joel at The Concert for New York City, a tribute show to the September 11 attacks. In 2004, Daniel Bedingfield performed a cover of the song to Elton John at "An Ivor Novello Tribute: Elton John". John performed "Your Song" to open the Concert for Diana on 1 July 2007. John and Lady Gaga performed a medley of "Your Song" with Gaga's song "Speechless" at the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards on 31 January 2010. At the 2013 Grammy Awards, Colombian singer Juanes performed a bilingual rendition of "Your Song". Gaga recorded a cover of the song for the 2018 tribute album "".


title: Your Song

text: Soul singer Billy Paul released a version of the song on Philadelphia International in 1972, as the B-side of "Me and Mrs. Jones", then in 1977, which reached number 37 on the UK Singles Chart and spent seven weeks in the top 75. Also in 1972, the song was covered by Finnish band Alwari Tuohitorvi, with Finnish lyrics.


title: Your Song

text: In 2018, John starred in the annual Christmas advert of British department store chain John Lewis & Partners, titled "The Boy & the Piano". Set to "Your Song", it featured John reminiscing about his life in reverse, culminating with him receiving a piano for Christmas as a child.