Hacking Blood Meridian

Heading out to New Mexico soon for Pop Culture Conference, this was my proposal. I finished my paper a couple days ago. Yay!!!

Hacking Blood Meridian by Candy Minx

I have been exploring calendrical and numerological appearances in Cormac McCarthy's novels and films made from his novels. Previous arguments have not included the use of numbers, astronomy and calendar, nor have they referenced religious texts and attitudes towards calendarization in those texts to McCarthy’s work. However, approaching McCarthy's work through its physical structure and design reveals patterns that reconcile science and religion in ways that are more practical than supernatural.

The exercise of unpacking calendrical information in McCarthy aligns him with a uniform recurring tradition often untaught or shrouded in mysticism. I'm going to compare McCarthy's Blood Meridian to The Shepherd's Calendar, The Hypostasis of the Archons, Westworld (the television version, not the movie starring Yul Brenner) and Spenser and the Numbers of Time, and demonstrate that Blood Meridian has been built upon calendar and astronomy. As well, we will see how McCarthy has included himself in a storytelling tradition going back to prehistoric peoples. As numbers emerge in Blood Meridian, they help us adopt different perceptions of time, distribute knowledge, and survive in the wild. 

Blood Meridian has a connection to the Westworld  by the subtle calendrical data embedded in both works while utilizing game theory and systems for improving memory.  While we attribute stature to art by applying philosophical, aesthetic or political analysis art has been supplying us with something much more valuable.

And here is our HUGE Two Part Episode