Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Korg 70,000 B.C.: "Eclipse of the Sun"

In “Eclipse of the Sun,” little Ree is bitten by a snake.

She develops a terrible fever and both Mara and Korg feel she will not live for long. Korg, Tane and the others go in search of a “kuba” root that can mitigate the “heat” of the fever.

But to find the root, the family must tread into the “Valley of the Voices,” a place where Gods reputedly speak in anger. 

The family’s entrance into the valley coincides, alas, with a solar eclipse that plunges the world into darkness…

Korg 70,000 B.C. (1974) generally does a very good job of transmitting what it must feel like to live in a world without knowledge and without science, only fearsome Nature, and the threat of angry Gods. 

In “Eclipse of the Sun,” Ree is dying, and the family must risk alienating a Great Spirit to save her. When the world is then “shrouded in darkness,” Korg and the others have real reason to fear that they have angered the Gods. Bok, for instance, is terrified of the eclipse, “sure that the world is coming to an end.” He actually collapses into some kind of paralyzed state from his fear.

Once more, Korg 70,000 B.C. holds up a mirror, in a way, for some aspects of religion…which can provide no concrete answers for events in the natural world, and which makes us second-guess our own actions. 

Have we angered the Almighty by attempting to save our dying child with medicine? That’s the question Korg and Mara are confronted with here.

Unfortunately there are people out there today who still possess such Neanderthal beliefs about medicine.  I can see why it’s appealing, too: it’s ego-centric.

If we believe vehemently in God’s anger at our behavior, we are simultaneously believing that our decisions, our choices (our obedience or disobedience) have some importance in the grand scheme of things. In this way, belief is not ultimately about obeying a deity, but about putting our own lives up on a pedestal.

All is vanity?

Of all the Saturday morning programs I have covered of late, Korg 70,000 B.C. is turning out to be the one most bristling with adult (and controversial) ideas.  I wasn’t exactly expecting that, but I’m grateful that the series was crafted with intelligence and curiosity…if not always a decent budget.