Passing the Buck

Welcome to Metaphysical Science Theater 3000. This collection is the first comprehensive attempt to place Traditionalism within a major field of modern popular culture-cinema, good and bad - and to recognize how each can clarify and illuminate the other.

Although Hollywood classics are included here (from Sitting Pretty to Touch of Evil) along with popular hits like Groundhog Day, Manhunter, and Silence of the Lambs, the emphasis is on movies small and personal, forgotten, or just plain weird (Psychomania). There's Manos, of course, but the real standout is an extended examination of autistic auteur Coleman Francis and his trilogy of boredom and postwar despair. All are minutely examined until they reveal evidence of cyclical time, karma, reincarnation, and ultimately the amoral attainment of enlightenment by what the author calls "passing the buck."