Copyright
2004. All Rights Reserved
Although
various actors receive the label of “legend” and “icon” upon
death, few actors are distinguished by ending eras and initiating
revolutions. With Marlon Brando’s arrival on stage
and screen, a veritable overthrowing occurred in what was
acceptable in performance. Not unlike Elvis Presley’s
presaging of Rock’n’Roll, Brando’s emergence
in entertainment ended one epoch and foretold of another.
The new era in acting was to allow for a new level of characterization—more
powerful, visceral, and genuine.
The revolutionary gesture that Brando invoked was to allow full expression of
the primitive, authentic, and darker aspects of the human experience. The 1940s—the
decade prior to Brando’s rise to eminence in film—featured actors
that portrayed the more heroic, moral, and decent potentials of the collective
psyche. Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, and Gregory Peck typically depicted
gallant characters on which the public could orient their moral compass. The
benefit from these roles was obvious—that we could all aspire to emulate
the civility and conscience of these heroes. However, as much as the positive
aspects of being human were emphasized by these characters, it was often the
case that the fullness of human possibilities was not allowed to shine through.
It was as if a tremendous reservoir of psychological energy was accessed by these
actors in service of a more restrained, refined style, and it took Brando to
show us exactly what was being repressed.
Through films beginning in the 1950s, Brando revealed a rich authenticity, spontaneity,
depth, brooding, and sexuality that lay dormant in American film. Brando brought
a potency and naturalism to screen acting that was nourished by roots that ran
deeper and reached more broadly than the type typically endorsed by the studio
system of the Golden Age of Hollywood. While Brando’s acting style was
at one turn revelatory, it was also strangely familiar, as his onscreen persona
reminded viewers that this is how people actually behaved in real life situations.
Brando was more deeply in touch with his daimon than other actors, a term used
by the ancient Greeks that roughly translates as “creative and essential
spirit.” From “daimon” we receive the English “demon” which
shows the connection between our own creativity and our own darkness. As psychologists
from Carl Jung to Rollo May have understood, creativity and our capacity for
the dark side of life stem from the same source and that one cannot fully exist
without the other. It is through our daimon (and our inner demons) that we ride
the perilous edge between destructive, depraved upheaval and spontaneous, creative
expression. Being in touch with his daimon on a deep level, Brando opened up
this dimension in an era when this aspect of the collective psyche seemed to
be thoroughly repressed.
In astrology, the daimonic (or “demonic”) is loosely affiliated with
the three outer planets but is arguably most associated with the symbol of Pluto.
Most often correlated with themes of sex, death, and transformation, Pluto represents
powerful, uncompromising energy that is both creative and destructive. Typically
in life, we create strategies that allow us to have the illusion that we can
control the force of nature that is Pluto, opening up to it only when it is absolutely
necessary. Most of us employ this strategy, to great cost. We might even argue
that this was the primary modus operandi in screen acting prior to Brando’s
premiere in film. An emphasis (if not overemphasis) in film roles was placed
on acting technique, the appearance of invulnerability, and a highly affected
style. As one commentator put it, after Brando, this stylized convention of acting
simply looked “silly.” Brando opened the acting palette up to the
demonic and the astrological Pluto. Brando’s acting was so powerful because
he allowed himself to be a conduit to this chaotic, transformative force. Not
one to rely upon manners, conventions, and formalities, Brando affirmed the demonic
and Plutonic through spontaneous expression, vulnerability, presence, and depth.
Brando’s birth chart is characterized thoroughly by Pluto. With the Sun
and Moon conjoined to square Pluto and with Mars opposing Pluto, Brando, it would
seem, was destined to have a high degree of the Plutonic archetype manifest throughout
his personal and professional life. The expressions of Pluto through his acting
and life are numerous. Upon making his second screen appearance in A Streetcar
Named Desire, it was evident to all that Brando exuded a sexuality that
may have been considered taboo before him. Certainly not a quality that you can
feign or hide, Brando’s level of erotic energy had a particular primitive
and feral quality to it. Brando’s characters also had a particular subterranean
quality, as if emerging from the shadows to appear in the light of day. He represented
the more brutal, evolutionary side of life in all its pain, richness, and intensity—all
thoroughly Plutonian in its quality.
Perhaps Brando’s most vivid expression of the Plutonic—and his birth
chart itself—came in his ability to spontaneously move from the emotionally
vulnerable and expressive to the powerfully ferocious and cruel. His ability
to shift modes organically from the tender and soft to the explosive and rageful
was well noted by colleagues and peers. We can see this dynamic mirrored in his
birth chart with the tense aspects formed between Mars, the Moon, and Pluto.
With Pluto intensifying the expressions of both planets, we see emotional depth
and receptiveness, on the one hand, and brute power and rage on the other. Perhaps
this dialectic was never captured so poignantly as in his portrayal in Last
Tango in Paris in which Brando swings between the reflective and nurturing
to the violent and wrathful, often in the same scene.
Actors that carry Pluto’s themes and expressions for a society often have
Pluto in tense aspect in their birth charts. These actors allow us to see what
lies underneath our societal conditioning and permit us to see a wider range
of possibilities: our wickedness, darkness, vulnerability, intensity, sexuality,
and creativity. Actors like James Cagney (t-square involving Pluto), Jack Nicholson
(t-square involving Pluto), and Sean Penn (square involving Pluto) have greater
access to their own daimon—demons—and are able to harness them for
their own performances to great effect.
As Brando’s acting and biography can attest, opening up to the power, intensity,
and vulnerability of Pluto’s archetype is often a double edged sword—one
is more receptive to creativity, depth, and passion but one must allow for the
possibility of more pain, tragedy, and the sacrifice of control. Brando’s
life and career was as chaotic, tragic, and destructive as it was powerful, triumphant,
and fertile. Allowing one’s fullness to be in this world is intimately
bound with allowing one’s demons to be full-voting members of one’s
inner congress. Perhaps film director Milos Foreman said it best: “If you
want a jungle you have to allow for the butterflies as much as the tigers.”
Marlon Brando’s Birth Time (from birth certificate):
April
3 1924
11:00 PM
Omaha Nebraska
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