From: jondr@sco.COM (Karen Silkwood's car)
Subject: ed & jon duke it out (was Re: Coppola's DRACULA)
Organization: The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 19:14:56 GMT


hope you don't mind me changing the subject line.  this has almost nothing
to do with dracula anymore.

egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Edward G. Nilges) writes:
>Since you admit that the process is at work in the Lethal Weapon series,
>I think at this point you are just trying to win an argument, even at
>the sacrifice of your deeper principles.

ed, you can think what you like.  i'm pretty amazed that you even think i
have any deeper principles to sacrifice.

>the Godfather, for example, sets stereotypes of Italians back years.

yeah, and what's your point?  it's a great movie.  if you had your way, how
would you tell that story?

>>yeah, and what happens in sitcoms and horror movies?  the good guys win.

>Not always, and often they win by a sort of deus ex machina in which
>patriarchal authority is used in a pinch.  

oh, so if *my* examples are "not always" applicable then they're useless and
full of crap, whereas if *your* examples are "not always" applicable,
it doesn't matter?

>>and after a few
>>setbacks, the good guys *do* manage to drive the stake into the heart of the
>>vampire.  

>Only after they accede to the superior wisdom of Anthony Hopkins.

gee whiz, you mean these movies encourage people to read books and go to the
library to research topics?  heaven forfend we might increase the literacy
of our generation, even inadvertently (and ironically) through the use of
cinema.  i should've thought of it earlier - this movie sends subliminal
messages telling you to READ...  (of course, you see it as a message telling
you to go to an acceptable source of authority to get your information, even
though the film clearly shows hopkins in libaries pulling books relevant to
his topic.  i think you're very very paranoid, ed.)

>I was saying that movies undercut human agency.

and i'm saying that you're dead wrong.  maybe i made a mistake in using such
absolute terms earlier - admittedly, every now and then a film does slip
through with a downbeat ending or featuring some horrible deus ex machina
ending.  but if you take a look at 9 out of 10 horror movies, they end with
the good guys finding the monster's achilles heel and using it to kill the
monster and save the universe.

>In your self-induced confusion, you've ended
>up arguing my thesis; I'm obliged to you; for while BRAZIL shows the
>protagonist as a hero, it UNDERCUTS his agency by dooming him at the
>end.

excuse me.  in brazil, human agency is *celebrated*!  sam snaps out of his
inward-directed catatonia and fights for a good cause.  i can't believe you
missed that little plot point.  (hint for you ed: don't argue brazil with
me.  i know this movie better than you know the shape of your own head.)

>Brazil is a satire on its idealistic protagonist (whose
>idealism is lost on American audiences, drawn as it is from John
>Bunyan and the Arthurian legends, where Gilliam seems to get much of
>his (unconscious?) inspiration.)  It's a putdown of idealism...of human
>agency.

you're nuts.  you've got it completely backwards!  do you do this sort of
thing on purpose?  you're the kind of person who encourages people to get
out there and do good stuff - challenge the "evil" non politically correct
thoughts and make changes for the better.  sam, at the beginning of brazil,
is most definitely *not* that kind of guy!  all he wants is to be left
alone.  he is changed, though, and he winds up *getting involved*.  in the
end, he escapes the only way he can - into his dream world.  in brazil, the
idea is not to let your brain be taken over by the state.  the final line in
the movie - "he's got away from us, mr helpmann" - totally drives this point
home.  sam is *free*.  free to think whatever thoughts he wants, free to
dream...

i can't believe you've been spewing all this bafflegap about watching movies
with a critical eye to find the subtexts and then you go and miss something
so incredibly obvious like this.

>Your confusion, which ends up stating the opposite of what it sets out 
>to say, is endemic to people with vaguely Leftish sentiments in the
>media.  Thus, Matt Groening, who started out doing rather creative
>work on dysfunctional families, is now making millions while South
>Korean animators do his dog work on The Simpsons;

it's hardly unique to matt groening!  businesses, whether run by people with
Left or Right tendencies, contract their work overseas because it costs too
much to have it done domestically.  and whose fault is that, anyway, ed?
you're so quick to condemn people who you think are Not Liberal Enough that
you use all sorts of faulty examples.

>and his current 
>cartoon in this week's Village Voice (and similar rags) lists as one 
>of the "forbidden words of 1993", "question authority."  The stance 
>of universal parody, so loved by the vague Left, in abandoning a fixed 
>location from which the parody is meaningful, ends up not parodying 
>the texts it would deride, but repeating them; just as some Saturday 
>Night Live episodes are quite simply racist, Groening's use of his 
>authority to forbid the canaille to "question authority" can be read 
>as a serious statement by a man whose "authority" has secured his livelihood.

you don't suppose that by seeing "question authority" on a list of
"forbidden words" it might lead hip young alienated kids like me to say,
"hey, waitaminnit.  who SAYS it's forbidden?  i'm gonna go question some
authority RIGHT NOW!"  telling someone not to do something is always the
quickest, surest way to get them to do precisely what you wanted...

>Think harder, please.  In The Fly, Jeff Goldblum's entrepreneural
>creativity becomes crazed obsession; perhaps we are being told by
>corporations to be less experimental in technology and life.  

maybe we're being told to use stricter quality control departments!  geez,
ed, what was that awful mary shelley person on about anyway in
"frankenstein"?

>>Did you see _The Player_?  I believe that
>>it makes the ultimate statement on this theme.

>No, I wanna see it but it's disappeared.  When it's released in video,
>I am sure I will have prolix opinions on it for posting to this
>forum.  And I yam convinced that I have made the ultimate statement on
>this theme :-).

come back when you've seen it.  you wanna talk about "manufactured
schizophrenia"?  this movie will give your brain a double hernia.

>...whose rapacity en masse is manufactured by the cynicism in detail
>of their members.  Everybody in the game expects the absolute worst
>from everyone else; labor expects to be screwed by management, management
>expects to be screwed by labor, union stewards expect the rank and file
>to be interested in doing less work for more pay, and the rank and
>file (from whose ranks come both labor, and on occasion, management)
>expect the union to increase dues and managers to speed up the line.
>Note that the overarching theme is one of cynicism and pessimism and
>that this manufactures the very results it predicts.

so what would you recommend a concerned hip young alienated guy like myself
do about it?  why do you suppose so many people my age *are* so damn cynical
anyway?  obviously my parents believe in the system, and at school we're
told to believe in it, but nobody i know does.  why is that?

-- 
Jon Drukman (God's personal DJ)                 uunet!sco!jondr   jondr@sco.com
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I was an infinitely hot and dense dot.
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