From: egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Edward G. Nilges)
Subject: Re: Coppola's DRACULA
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 18:03:21 GMT

>and i suppose that "expresses a lot of repressed hostility and aggression 
>and indeed is a Dracula-like desire to infect a woman with your bodily fluids"
>was grounded in your many years of personal experience with the person to whom
>you were referring? or could it have been a disgusting projection of your
>own mental imbalance? and could that immediately preceding query be quite 
>the same in its presumption as your statement was? i believe so.

I based this supposition (which did go out on a limb) on the repressed 
hostility evident in all of the original poster's writings, a hostility
that found expression in a hip, slick Saturday Night "Live" cynicism,
that denies anger, yet in which anger tends to slip out around the edges
(as in the startling image of deliberately vomiting on a date, in an
era when women do put themselves at risk for vomit and much more when
they date.)  You certainly seem to know me enough to say that I am a
pseudo-intellectual.  Or is the Great Law that the critics of the powerful
are an allowable target, but that the defenders of the great football
team of life are not?
>
>>     What's"pseudo-intellectual?"  Is this country now a Latin American
>>     banana republic, in which even without the modifier,
>>     "Intellectuals" shall be targets of opportunity, whether in last
>>     Sunday's New York Times Book Review, or in Paul Johnson's hack
>>     work, whose very designator shall be produced with a colonel's
>>     brutal sneer?
>
>if there were even a fraction of honest intellectual inquiry in what you 
>write, rather than mere catalogs of "politically correct" presumptions and 
>agenda based upon convenient historical revisionism, i might consider you
>other than a pseudo-intellectual.

This is merely a string of words, "full of sound and fury, signifying
nothing."  


     *  It is more honest to confess freely what one reads in a filmic
        text, and once again, it startles me that Coppola can make a
        film defending a mediaeval "impaler" of Turks in an era when
        the beastliness of Muslims who had been forcibly converted
        by the Turks is used as a smokescreen for genocide.  Joseph
        Brodsky recently wrote a poem for the New York Times OpEd
        page in which he said that as we go around out comfortable
        American lives (watching films, for example), in Bosnia-
        Herzegovina,

             "People die."

        I can well imagine videocassette versions of Dracula being
        used in six months to entertain Serbian militiamen and to
        still their doubts.

     *  It is news to me that it is "politically correct" to be
        outraged on behalf of Bosnian Catholics and Muslims, who
        are being killed by Eastern Orthodox Serbs (although the
        latter cannot be said to be decent Orthodox, for that
        religion does indeed subscribe to the commandment, "Thou
        shalt not kill.")  Here in the United States, the "politic-
        ally correct" left wing is silent on the genocide and the
        only organized opposition comes from the rather "incorrect"
        Roman Catholic Church.  Occasionally, reference is made to
        Bosnian Catholics' support of Hitler, which happened fifty
        years ago and presupposes that Hitler is the only daemon
        of this tragic century.  Also, Eastern Europe as a whole
        demonstrates the failure of anarchism and libertarian
        thought in that people have used their "freedom" not to
        start Federal Express franchises but instead to revive
        truly ancient hatreds.

     *  And of course I have an agenda.  I know that the preferred
        style in today's America is a sort of slack-jawed, drool-
        streaked empiricism which disavows any agenda in fear of
        offending someone who (like Coppola) might have the power,
        through a membership in the corporate elite.  Too fucking
        bad.


>if you will trouble yourself to *think* for a moment, i have not expressed
>anywhere any intent or interest in keeping you from expressing yourself - 
>nay, i could not physically do so. but if you are going to express yourself, 
>you must be prepared for criticism. and criticize i will - as is my right and
>obligation. 

If you'd trouble to read Stanley Fish, however, you'd know that all critic-
ism is an attempt to silence, only there are different styles of criticism,
some of which are just at some time and others, just at another time.  
Although I saw a bumper sticker recently that said "visualize armed 
revolution", it's best in our society to criticize, not other members
of the university/corporate serfdom, but powerful people, with words, not
guns.  But there is a continuum between speech and action, and what
Guzman was engaged in in his society (almost understandable if you're
a Peruvian peasant or unemployed college graduate to whom the promise
of dollar-a-day factory jobs imported from Michigan is disheartening)
is essentially the same sort of thing as criticizing Coppola.  I note
that all this libertarian free speech ends up avoiding criticising
truly powerful people, and I have demonstrated repeatedly on the net
that these libertarian promises of free speech to non-libertarian
views are as hollow as the 1938 Soviet Constitution's guarantees of
free speech.  Prolix details on application.

>>     Coppola's a Fascist, and a no-talent when compared to Attenborough.
>>     You gotta problem with that?
>
>hey, i worked for the man. he's a lunatic, not a fascist! and until

I rest my case.  For Hitler and Mussolini (and Al D'Amato) are all lunatics
of the right, definitionally Fascists, too.  And this is not an Italian
slur, for I'm German-American.

>Attenborough learns how to create excellent Rubicon wine and heavenly 
>brick-oven pizza, *he's* the no-talent here (insert trite ascii smiley as
>necessary). frankly, i don't care how many bad films coppola makes. his 
>good ones outclass attenborough's best by a country mile. and i 
>enthusiastically admit that coppola hasn't made a good movie in twelve years
>at least.

You've clearly not seen Ghandi or Chaplin...oooo I guess Attenborough 
(in Ghandi) recommends a civil disobedience strategy that may well
work in this country to get (for example) decent health care for the
inner cities.  I guess Attenborough directly criticises (in Chaplin)
the way in which elites (represented by the dinner table including
a young J. Edgar Hoover) subtly censor anti-authoritarianism.
>
>a poor craftsman blames his tools. heh!(tm)

...for his faults.  But I used the software as directed.  You only
illustrate how computer systems, with their numerous and often
uncorrectable bugs, are used in our society to systematically lower
worker self-esteem, for you obviously blame yourself (and probably
work unpaid overtime) when, say, compiler bugs make it appear as
if your code is buggy (I am going to assume for the sake of argument
and as a matter of probability that you code.)

A user of the net is no more a craftsperson than a driver of a car,
as opposed to an auto mechanic, and such a user has the right to
expect the software to work as promised.  The fact that software
companies, notably Microsoft, have withheld this right from the
public by warranty-free marketing (and sweating technical professionals,
destroying their self-esteem and any sense of craftsmanship in the
bargain) does not change this right.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies