Horse Jam: The Movie, when it was finally released, was rumoured to be ‘The biggest thing since tubed mustard’. A ground-breaking story of Being and Non-Being, it was hailed by Roger Ebert as ‘A phenomenon unlike any other phenomenon that has ever been told or even vaguely conceived of before’. The seed of this story, it is purported, was snagged in the great fishing hole of the psyche at about five in the morning on a Tuesday in early March, 2008. Horse Jam screenwriter, Aloysius J. Lupini, could hardly believe the integrity of the story arc his inscrutable fever dream possessed. And this arc, the ‘spine’ of the story, defiantly withstood the bright light of waking consciousness. It remained absolutely intact as it was lashed by reason and subjected to the ruthless superimposition of the ‘creative structures’ of cinematic adaptation. Yet the internal logic of the story was radically alien in its novelty. It seemed to belong to a different species or dimension, fundamentally different from our own but strangely familiar on an intuitive, quantum level. The old archetypal forms had been inverted and reanimated, given new life and a new sense of purpose. Critics were baffled and speechless. Reviews would generally be laconic to the point of ridiculousness, often containing no more than an ambiguous headline, such as ‘No words to describe Horse Jam’, and an irrelevant photograph – the news print equivalent of grunting. It seemed that a new language, or at least a new lexicon of jargon, had to be developed to even discuss Horse Jam.
The story was everything and nothing. It was at once universal and cryptically idiosyncratic. Audiences left theatres stunned - their mouths agape, squeezing their noses, massaging their temples. The absolute disregard for the established paradigms of story-telling left viewers in a sort of pre-linguistic haze for up to two weeks. At first, this was interpreted as a positive development. A necessary interim stage of general bewilderment as individuals embarked on the new evolutionary path of psychic development that Horse Jam had cut through the dense jungle of tired preconceptions and washed up cultural values.
And when people emerged from this state, they generally seemed happier, their perspectives vastly broadened. Individuals commonly reported experiencing a residual transcendence that allowed them to ‘hover over language’ as it were. Consumption patterns shifted. Sales of tubed mustard went through the roof – an unforeseen twist on early predictions. Not only was the film ‘bigger than tubed mustard’, it coincided with a startling spike in demand for the conveniently dispensed condiment. And then the masses started demanding that other condiments, such as mayonnaise, relish and horseradish, be packaged and sold in tubes, as well. The link between this trend and Horse Jam was tenuous and highly speculative, but in the absence of any empirically validated cause, many fingers pointed at the enigmatic film. Naturally, paranoia and distrust set in, particularly amongst politicians, bureaucrats, bankers, and corporate executives – anyone with an entrenched interest in the prevailing structures of global capitalist society. The threat of tube technology taking over the entire condiment market was simply too disruptive. Strings were pulled at the upper rungs of power, and after three record-smashing months in theatres, Horse Jam was yanked.
A month later, lobby groups in North America, the EU and China pushed through aggressive legislation that has effectively banned the film on grounds that it is an ‘insidious propaganda tool affecting mass-hypnosis and irrational consumer behavior’. There will be no DVD release. Pirated downloads previously available online have been largely blocked. The memory of Horse Jam still lives on in tens of millions of minds, but only as a distant, ineffable series of images telling a story that existed at the threshold of the comprehensible.
