black panthers, night furies and black horses
a brief random dissertation on an archetype
Night Furies...
When I was four our TV had one channel (an NBC channel) in greenish black and white and it was loaded with westerns. Roy and Dale on their golden horses, the Lone Ranger on his white one. Zorro on his black horse, and Fury, the wild black horse only an orphan boy could ride. This fueled my wish for a Wild Black Horse, which I eventually adopted through the BLM's Adopt-A-Horse program. She'd run wild in southeastern Oregon for eight years before being rounded up. I trained her, but I think she taught me more.
The Black Horse is the one Zorro rides by night. The one only a kid can tame. It is the raw thunderous power of tornados (Zorro's horse was called Tornado) and storm skies and night wind. In the Black Stallion series (Walter Farley), a kid named Alec is the only one who can handle The Black. In Dreamworks' How To Train Your Dragon films and TV series, the Night Fury is the least known and most dangerous (they think) of the dragons. It is the fastest and in many ways, the most deadly. And it is the scrawniest, most pathetic Viking kid, Hiccup, who traps one, comes to understand him, and forms a bond when everyone else in Hiccup's village wants to kill dragons. The innocence, the inventiveness, the untarnished quality of youth is what allows Hiccup to do what no one else in his culture can: ride a Night Fury.
When I was four our TV had one channel (an NBC channel) in greenish black and white and it was loaded with westerns. Roy and Dale on their golden horses, the Lone Ranger on his white one. Zorro on his black horse, and Fury, the wild black horse only an orphan boy could ride. This fueled my wish for a Wild Black Horse, which I eventually adopted through the BLM's Adopt-A-Horse program. She'd run wild in southeastern Oregon for eight years before being rounded up. I trained her, but I think she taught me more.
The Black Horse is the one Zorro rides by night. The one only a kid can tame. It is the raw thunderous power of tornados (Zorro's horse was called Tornado) and storm skies and night wind. In the Black Stallion series (Walter Farley), a kid named Alec is the only one who can handle The Black. In Dreamworks' How To Train Your Dragon films and TV series, the Night Fury is the least known and most dangerous (they think) of the dragons. It is the fastest and in many ways, the most deadly. And it is the scrawniest, most pathetic Viking kid, Hiccup, who traps one, comes to understand him, and forms a bond when everyone else in Hiccup's village wants to kill dragons. The innocence, the inventiveness, the untarnished quality of youth is what allows Hiccup to do what no one else in his culture can: ride a Night Fury.
later in my childhood, there was this...
http://www.disneyclips.com/imagesnewb/junglebook3.html
but this came first...
Though I liked the Disney version of the Jungle Book, I read the Kipling version first, and still like that best. Bagheera was always my favorite character (next was the thirty foot Kaa the Python, one of Mowgli's teachers, not a villain, in the book). Though in grade school, for some strange reason, I thought Bagheera was a girl panther. I ended up with various black panther animal figures by Schleich and Safari and others, as well as a poster that still hangs above my bed. For some reason, in the 50s and 60s, ceramic black panthers were the rage. Often they were planters. Now they're just expensive on Etsy.
I was comics impaired, so I missed these
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Batman (from DC Comics, left) and the Black Panther (from Marvel comics, right) used similar imagery (it also is similar to Zorro) evoking Creatures of the Night, powerful images meant to strike fear into the hearts of villains, and let everyone else know they were protected. The Black Panther, T'Challa, wisely ditched the cape. Bats appeared first in 1939 (the second modern superhero after Superman), Panther in 1966... ironically earlier in the same year that the political movement began. The comic was original, I have no idea if the party copied it. For a time, the comic renamed its hero Black Leopard in an effort to distance itself from a controversial political party. It didn't work, the name "Panther" was stronger, better imagery, and outlasted politics. The comic however was not... and is not... afraid to address social issues.
It was not until the film Captain America: Civil War, that I was introduced to the king of Wakanda. Wow, wish my parents had been into comics!
It was not until the film Captain America: Civil War, that I was introduced to the king of Wakanda. Wow, wish my parents had been into comics!
Black Panthers
"Panther" is a generic term for any of a number of large cat species. It is often applied to leopards, particularly melanistic (dark or black) ones. It also is used to describe the American cougar (along with a bunch of other names, mountain lion, puma, catamount etc... like they couldn't figure out what to call it). It also can apply to the leopard's relative, the jaguar of central and south America. Panthera is a genus within the family felidae (cats): lion, tiger, jaguar, leopard, snow leopard, clouded leopard, Sunda clouded leopard. Felidae is divided into big cats and little cats, or; Cats That Roar and Cats That Purr. Panthera roars, except the snow leopard, which appears to be a sister species to the tiger. The other "panther", the cougar, actually is the largest of the "small cat purring" family; felinae. Even its facial features and head structure more closely resemble a large house cat than a tiger. Other felinae include familiar critters like lynx and cheetah. The two families diverged between 6 and 10 million years ago.
There are any number of websites that unravel the Deeper Meaning of the imagery of Black Panthers. Like most "spirit guides", it depends on your own experience and cultural background. Here's a couple to give you the idea...
https://whatismyspiritanimal.com/spirit-totem-power-animal-meanings/mammals/black-panther-symbolism-meaning/
https://www.universeofsymbolism.com/black-panther-symbolism.html
http://www.spiritanimal.info/panther-spirit-animal/
More or less, the black panther is guardian, traveler in the spirit realm, death and rebirth, reclaiming your power, ability to understand the dark (and to move through it safely). It is a challenge to overcome the fears held within your shadow. It is night, and moon, and worlds unseen. Calm, cool, collected. Panther has bursts of incredible agility and speed, but it can't hold that pace for long. (we do not run the Iditarod with cats...) It embodies beauty, grace, strength, power, courage. In Marvel's Black Panther film, we see beautiful women embodying all these qualities. They do not sacrifice beauty for strength or power for femininity. The hero who uses the Black Panther imagery also encompasses complex qualities of sensitivity and power, aloneness and connection.
"If panther has appeared in your life, it is time to release your passions, live your dreams, discover your desires and begin a new chapter in your life."
"Panther" is a generic term for any of a number of large cat species. It is often applied to leopards, particularly melanistic (dark or black) ones. It also is used to describe the American cougar (along with a bunch of other names, mountain lion, puma, catamount etc... like they couldn't figure out what to call it). It also can apply to the leopard's relative, the jaguar of central and south America. Panthera is a genus within the family felidae (cats): lion, tiger, jaguar, leopard, snow leopard, clouded leopard, Sunda clouded leopard. Felidae is divided into big cats and little cats, or; Cats That Roar and Cats That Purr. Panthera roars, except the snow leopard, which appears to be a sister species to the tiger. The other "panther", the cougar, actually is the largest of the "small cat purring" family; felinae. Even its facial features and head structure more closely resemble a large house cat than a tiger. Other felinae include familiar critters like lynx and cheetah. The two families diverged between 6 and 10 million years ago.
There are any number of websites that unravel the Deeper Meaning of the imagery of Black Panthers. Like most "spirit guides", it depends on your own experience and cultural background. Here's a couple to give you the idea...
https://whatismyspiritanimal.com/spirit-totem-power-animal-meanings/mammals/black-panther-symbolism-meaning/
https://www.universeofsymbolism.com/black-panther-symbolism.html
http://www.spiritanimal.info/panther-spirit-animal/
More or less, the black panther is guardian, traveler in the spirit realm, death and rebirth, reclaiming your power, ability to understand the dark (and to move through it safely). It is a challenge to overcome the fears held within your shadow. It is night, and moon, and worlds unseen. Calm, cool, collected. Panther has bursts of incredible agility and speed, but it can't hold that pace for long. (we do not run the Iditarod with cats...) It embodies beauty, grace, strength, power, courage. In Marvel's Black Panther film, we see beautiful women embodying all these qualities. They do not sacrifice beauty for strength or power for femininity. The hero who uses the Black Panther imagery also encompasses complex qualities of sensitivity and power, aloneness and connection.
"If panther has appeared in your life, it is time to release your passions, live your dreams, discover your desires and begin a new chapter in your life."
then, there are the Night Furies
Dreamworks' How to Train Your Dragon series of films and TV was a riproaring romp into what Joey (of the Fury series) and Mowgli (of the Jungle Book) might have done if they'd been Vikings and had dragons. We find the same archetype of a geeky kid who is the only one who can understand and relate to the wild black dragon/horse/cat. Toothless is sort of a dragonhorsecat.
He was partly based on an animator's cat, and on someone's screensaver of a black panther.
That's my cat, named Nightcrawler (after the X-Man in Marvel Comics)... and he is slightly toothless, after a dental issue. Night Fury, Nightcrawler, it fits. The superhero Nightcrawler is also part of that same set of Creature of the Night imagery. Like Black Panther, he is agile and quick... like a cat. His scary appearance belies his gentle soul.
even my car...
These black beasts (and heroes using their imagery) have more in common than color: they are an archetype. They are Zorro and Batman and the Terminator that comes to guard a boy. They are the melanistic leopard who buys the life of a lost boy with the blood of the hunt, and teaches him the Law of the Jungle (Bagheera). They are the leader of a hidden kingdom whose people have always looked to the Panther Goddess to guide them. They are Fury and the Night Fury and not at all the Golden Horse of Roy Rogers or the White Horse of the Lone Ranger. They are dark night sea, and endless star filled skies, and what's on the other side of the Black Hole, and deep oceans and Mystery and Power.
And if you speak their language, if you approach these Mysteries in the right way, even if you shoot them down, as Hiccup did Toothless, if you surpass your fears, and throw away your killing knife, and eat the regurgitated fish, you might find yourself soaring on the back of a dragon.
Anne McCaffrey wrote some books about dragonriders some decades ago, the Dragonriders of Pern series... she was a horsewoman and it showed in her stories, in the relationship of her riders and dragons. Ask a good horseman about a good horse and you'll get an answer that suggests a telepathic link between horse and rider. Sure, horses are sensitive, they read every shift of your weight, every tightened muscle, every breath. They have superpowers, they hear, see and smell things you can't. Maybe that's all it is (says Science), but Science has stuff to learn yet. Maybe there is some deeper link, some deeper sense the horse beneath you has.
It's there in the wonderful relationship between Hiccup and Toothless. It's there is the way Hiccup leans over Toothless' neck as they dive from the sky, the forward perch of a jockey racing the wind, of a rider leaping a thousand pound animal over a jump... a seconds long flight over which the rider has zero control. You guide the approach, you steer after the landing, but in the air, it's all the power of Horse.
There are other Powerful Animal Companions in the stories I loved: Aslan of Narnia... the doughty ponies, heroic horses, Beorn the Bear and the giant eagles of Middle Earth... Bud and Flipper... Timmie and Lassie, and Rin Tin Tin, and the Littlest Hobo... Tarzan's ape family... animal companions who guide, guard and carry the smallest heroes on their journeys. But it is the Black Horse and the Black Panther and their kin that are my favorites.
PS: I'm a Leo. Lion is part of the "panthera" genus; Panthera leo.
And if you speak their language, if you approach these Mysteries in the right way, even if you shoot them down, as Hiccup did Toothless, if you surpass your fears, and throw away your killing knife, and eat the regurgitated fish, you might find yourself soaring on the back of a dragon.
Anne McCaffrey wrote some books about dragonriders some decades ago, the Dragonriders of Pern series... she was a horsewoman and it showed in her stories, in the relationship of her riders and dragons. Ask a good horseman about a good horse and you'll get an answer that suggests a telepathic link between horse and rider. Sure, horses are sensitive, they read every shift of your weight, every tightened muscle, every breath. They have superpowers, they hear, see and smell things you can't. Maybe that's all it is (says Science), but Science has stuff to learn yet. Maybe there is some deeper link, some deeper sense the horse beneath you has.
It's there in the wonderful relationship between Hiccup and Toothless. It's there is the way Hiccup leans over Toothless' neck as they dive from the sky, the forward perch of a jockey racing the wind, of a rider leaping a thousand pound animal over a jump... a seconds long flight over which the rider has zero control. You guide the approach, you steer after the landing, but in the air, it's all the power of Horse.
There are other Powerful Animal Companions in the stories I loved: Aslan of Narnia... the doughty ponies, heroic horses, Beorn the Bear and the giant eagles of Middle Earth... Bud and Flipper... Timmie and Lassie, and Rin Tin Tin, and the Littlest Hobo... Tarzan's ape family... animal companions who guide, guard and carry the smallest heroes on their journeys. But it is the Black Horse and the Black Panther and their kin that are my favorites.
PS: I'm a Leo. Lion is part of the "panthera" genus; Panthera leo.
sheepball...
dragons, Siberians and squeaky toys, a random musing
In the introduction to How To Train Your Dragon 2 we see the Dragonriders of Berk playing a game with dragons and sheep. You just know that somewhen, somewhere, somebody is going to object heartily to the Vikings of Berk playing Sheepball. Let me just point out that no sheep (CG or otherwise) were injured in the making of this film. That's made very clear in every scene.
Let me also point out that the core of both How to Train Your Dragon films are about our relationship with Nature, her creatures, and especially the large, carnivorous scary ones we tend to kill off because they prey on our livestock.
The first scene in the first film is just that... dragons carrying off a light snack of sheep, the sort of thing that has caused all sorts of Big Bad Wolf mythology in livestock keeping cultures over the millennia.
Note that North American Natives had a very different view of wolves and other predators (generally admiring them) because THEY DIDN'T KEEP SHEEP. Or any other livestock. They understood the predators for what they are: a part of the natural balance.
HTTYD parts 1 and 2 have this idea as one of their subtle undercurrents. Vikings want to kill the dragons, Hiccup finds himself (as the unusually wired, oddball geek with a different viewpoint) in a position to change hearts and minds. Berk is now no longer at odds with Dragons.
In the East, Dragon is all of the animals. Dragon is wisdom, strength, and a lot of other good stuff I'm not googling right now.
I suspect, that somewhere, in the West, far enough back, Dragon stood for something other than evil. After all, the Vikings called their longships "dragonships", and often had dragon imagery upon them.
A paleontologist I met once had a question from a kid in the audience about the connection between dragons and dinosaurs. The answer wasn't definitive, but it was interesting: even in cultures which didn't have reptiles (far north), or hadn't gone to faraway places where huge reptiles roamed (think Crusaders coming back with tales of saltwater crocs and ginormous snakes...)...there were still dragon legends.
Because everyone can find dinosaur bones.
One last thought on Sheepball.
Why not just use balls?
Like Quidditch, you know, I'm sure the crafty blacksmith and Hiccup could come up with some cool ball thing with bells and whistles and wings.
Except the dragons wouldn't chase it.
I know, I have Siberian huskies. Balls, booooooooring. That's for civilized breeds like Labrador retrievers. Siberians (and other northern dogs) have a very high prey drive, but it has to actually be PREY. Balls don't count. Fluffy toys that squeak like dying rabbits are amusing for about two minutes, until they realize you can't eat them.
Dragons need sheep to chase, even if they can't actually eat them. Sheepball was not only a funny tie-in to the first film... not only were the sheep hilarious (echoing Aardman's eternally stunned looking clueless woolballs)... but it makes sense, some animator either thought this through, has a husky, or just got lucky, but it makes total sense.
Sheepballl cannot be played with substitutes.
Carry on and carry sheep.
dragons, Siberians and squeaky toys, a random musing
In the introduction to How To Train Your Dragon 2 we see the Dragonriders of Berk playing a game with dragons and sheep. You just know that somewhen, somewhere, somebody is going to object heartily to the Vikings of Berk playing Sheepball. Let me just point out that no sheep (CG or otherwise) were injured in the making of this film. That's made very clear in every scene.
Let me also point out that the core of both How to Train Your Dragon films are about our relationship with Nature, her creatures, and especially the large, carnivorous scary ones we tend to kill off because they prey on our livestock.
The first scene in the first film is just that... dragons carrying off a light snack of sheep, the sort of thing that has caused all sorts of Big Bad Wolf mythology in livestock keeping cultures over the millennia.
Note that North American Natives had a very different view of wolves and other predators (generally admiring them) because THEY DIDN'T KEEP SHEEP. Or any other livestock. They understood the predators for what they are: a part of the natural balance.
HTTYD parts 1 and 2 have this idea as one of their subtle undercurrents. Vikings want to kill the dragons, Hiccup finds himself (as the unusually wired, oddball geek with a different viewpoint) in a position to change hearts and minds. Berk is now no longer at odds with Dragons.
In the East, Dragon is all of the animals. Dragon is wisdom, strength, and a lot of other good stuff I'm not googling right now.
I suspect, that somewhere, in the West, far enough back, Dragon stood for something other than evil. After all, the Vikings called their longships "dragonships", and often had dragon imagery upon them.
A paleontologist I met once had a question from a kid in the audience about the connection between dragons and dinosaurs. The answer wasn't definitive, but it was interesting: even in cultures which didn't have reptiles (far north), or hadn't gone to faraway places where huge reptiles roamed (think Crusaders coming back with tales of saltwater crocs and ginormous snakes...)...there were still dragon legends.
Because everyone can find dinosaur bones.
One last thought on Sheepball.
Why not just use balls?
Like Quidditch, you know, I'm sure the crafty blacksmith and Hiccup could come up with some cool ball thing with bells and whistles and wings.
Except the dragons wouldn't chase it.
I know, I have Siberian huskies. Balls, booooooooring. That's for civilized breeds like Labrador retrievers. Siberians (and other northern dogs) have a very high prey drive, but it has to actually be PREY. Balls don't count. Fluffy toys that squeak like dying rabbits are amusing for about two minutes, until they realize you can't eat them.
Dragons need sheep to chase, even if they can't actually eat them. Sheepball was not only a funny tie-in to the first film... not only were the sheep hilarious (echoing Aardman's eternally stunned looking clueless woolballs)... but it makes sense, some animator either thought this through, has a husky, or just got lucky, but it makes total sense.
Sheepballl cannot be played with substitutes.
Carry on and carry sheep.
