The 10 Commandments
Dumbass Moses achieves his personal objectives by a Deus Ex Machina, leading to many pointless suffering and death, over sheer pride. Pointless sentiments condemn thousands to more death and suffering, because one guy hears golden advice from his would-be wife and lover, and dismisses it. Fuck patriarchy!
Even though this is a story eternally retold, it’s worth it to tell it again, putting the emphasis on the ignorant fool protagonist.
Seti, the Pharaoh, has some brown nosed high priest who read on chicken entrails that a child has born who will be the end of him. Like Herod afterwards, he fulfils his part by culling all slave newborns.
One escapes, floating away on a basket that reaches the palace. The chief nanny is adamant in avoiding mixing slave blood of the Levites with Egyptian royals, but the woman is mourning her husband and her biological clock is ticking, so she takes him as her son. The nanny grumbles between her teeth but complies.
Years pass and the Pharaoh is now an old man. Moses arrives from his last project, protecting the southern border. Instead of the Trumpian “Build a WALL” and accusing Ethiopians of being rapists, he befriends them and brings them to the empire, where they bring tributes in exchange for peace. This leads to Ramses, his pure blood brother, to get even more egg on his face over not finishing the city for Seti’s jubilee.
There is talk of revolt amongst the slaves and Ramses is dragging his feet, so Moses is re-routed to the city project, and Ramses is sent to head the spooks.
Moses is an experienced and visionary leader, so he raises “wages” by raiding the priests’ grain stockpiles, and implements progressive policies of paid time off of a single day per week. He personally makes an example of tyrant taskmasters, and curtails some of the most egregious abuses. This greatly rises morale and construction moves ahead swiftly.
This brings Seti to a crossroads, since he yearns to pick a successor to the throne. On one hand, he has Moses, loyal, hard working and smart. On the other, Ramses was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and can’t lead his way out of a paperbag. In addition to this, Nefertiri (Seti’s daughter) is head over heels old Moses and might as well kill herself if she has to bed Ramses. Sounds like a simple choice.
Moses finds a way to fuck this up. When his ascendancy to the throne is nearly certain, the snakes appear. The old nanny conspires against Moses, but Nefertiri murders her. Nefertiri and Bithia (his affective mother) beg of him to first take his rightful place as Pharaoh, supreme leader of the empire, with sound arguments (used by Moses himself!), that only the Pharaoh can release slaves from bondage and worship whatever gods he wants. Even his biological mother announces him as the Messiah, but he ain’t taking advice from no woman!
He goes undercover as a slave and witnesses first hand their plight. This is not enough to sway him into being Pharaoh and changing things, he remains in the mud and gets caught up in a plot that leads to the death of the Master Builder (which he had previously called Master Butcher and could have sacked on the spot). He then brags about being Hebrew and another snake overhears him and tells Ramses.
When the jubilee comes and Seti is to choose a successor, Ramses reveals Moses in chains as a traitor rabble rouser and Jew, Seti excommunicates Moses, and Ramses is Pharaoh, marrying Nefertiri. Moses’s life is spared as a way for Ramses to twist the knife further.
Moses is condemned to wander the desert, while the narrator lets us know that he moves forward with God’s fervour, that prophets are made here, and the heat and dryness are like the forge that prepares the metal for the creator to mould into a Holy Weapon. He has just learned his biological mother has died, and walks and walks until he finds an oasis.
And quite an oasis that is, since he finds an harem of lustful nubile maids eager for the male embrace of a manly gruff prophet. Oh, how they desire to know him in the biblical sense. All he needs to do is to swat some goat herders who want water. So much for brotherly love between all men… The nubiles are daughters of Jethro (not Tull). They want to tap that ass hard so he stays for a while, tending sheep in the base of Sinai, waiting for a sign of God.
After selling the year’s wool for a princely sum, Moses can choose which daughter is his for ravishing. He chooses Sephora, the cougar, and he lives for a few years as a small business owner in the sticks.
One day, he spots Joshua, the slave he saved from the Master Builder near his sheep. Ahead, he meets the Burning Bush, where he Skypes God and he sends him on a quest to deliver the Israelites to the Holy Land, unwittingly creating strife that remains to this very day.
And so it begins, the deliverance. Moses turns into a literal Jehovah’s Witness and comes barging on the Pharaoh’s door, spreading the word of God. He turns his staff into a snake that eats the pagan snakes. He institutes nepotism and has his brother Aaron emcee for him.
The plagues of Egypt are unleashed upon the land. The Pharaoh has intel and he knows there’s a perfectly rational explanation for all of them, but Moses is still banging on about releasing his people, eliding his own responsibilities as near Pharaoh in the past.
Moses turns into a bona-fide psycho as the Pharaoh’s own son is killed. Nefertiri races ahead to save Moses’s son from death by Ramses’ cullers of first-borns, but the prophecy is backwards, it is her son that will die by the wrath of Old Testament God. She begs him to spare HER son, but he cares little about her suffering, since he is just a vessel for God’s actions, he ain’t murdering nobody.
To commemorate God’s murdering of thousands of innocent children, so that “tomorrow, the light of freedom will shine upon” them, Moses and his committee feast and sing praises to this deity. In the background, many shrieks of mothers finding only death where their children laid. Finis coronat opus… His affective mother requests a place at the table, shot down by some as abetting idol worshippers, but Moses overrides.
After such calamity, Ramses capitulates, letting his people go. Exodus commences, all chaotic, led by someone who knows not where he is going.
When his pagan gods cannot bring his son back to life, Ramses rages and chases Moses’ rabble with his chariots. The Red Sea is parted, and they all perish. The pharaoh surrenders to evidence, and it’s not even capable of killing Nefertiri for some man thing, giving him bad advices maybe?
Free of all constraints, the Israelites move to the base of Sinai while Moses Skypes God for guidance. He waits for 40 days until God farts out 10 tautologies that spring to his mind on the spot, carving them into some tablets, to shut him up.
Meanwhile, conspirators created a Golden Calf by pooling and melting all gold, and are now worshipping it as an idol. Moses chucks the tablets at them and, just like those Samsung tablets, they burst into flames, the floor cracks and all idolaters and gold falls through the cracks.
The move on afterwards and reach the Jordan river. They will wander around for 40 more years after that, but Moses himself calls it quits and bolts to Heaven.
The initial credits last for 5min of Bernstein epic music, and you can probably write essays about just the credits.
There are some crazy shit going on on the background of the big scenes. The health and safety aspect is completely ignored.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.