RUSALKA

A warning in the guise of a tale

Throughout human history nature has been a cruel phenomena whose consequences one either endured or dominated in order to survive. We believe that nature is animated by spirits because it works in a way that defies comprehension.
Rusalka is a Slavic fairytale. A warning in the guise of a tale. It is within this spirit that it must be deciphered.
The love of Rusalka for the prince is an unnatural love for which she pays the price. She wants to become human since humans have all the privileges.
But nature is not vengeful. She is defenseless against humanity’s wickedness. In losing her way Rusalka lost her voice because she was unable to deny herself. Only a human can do that.
And that’s what humans do.

Hyper-consumerism, wastefulness, pollution and self-centeredness. Greediness, avariciousness and thoughtlessness. Nature is being murdered by culture. Nature adorns itself with the finery of culture, with its rubbish, which it must find very beautiful since hardly anything remains which is still pristine, hardly anything that is not touched by humans. Greed inflates the appetites and impoverishes the earth. We wear our decadence like a brand name, plastic surgery becomes an artificial landscape for others to see. We move to the country in order to domesticate it, to force it to conform to a human ideal of the unnatural, the disinfected and sterile. Devoid of life.
Rusalka is a fairytale, a warning. But it is rather a question of transcending reality than representing it; in which case a documentary would be more suitable with its more efficient representation of reality.
The fairytale is cruel. Nature is perverted by the human. Humanity destroys itself.
When there are no more trees, from which branch will humans be able to hang themselves by way of punishment for their crimes?