lives of others

lives of others

-the very beginning was good. Showing an interrogation which we naturally want to say is inhuman and unjust but then to show that the subject was indeed lying (people who are telling the truth can speak the truth in many different ways where the liars memorize certain phrases and repeat them -- this is how it works for philosophy professors too!)

-the agent's perspective strangely mirrored the normal experience of watching TV/film and wanting to help the characters, this bred a familiarity with him which otherwise wouldn't have been there because they spent little time developing his character.Any average, unimportant person, could imagine themselves as a hero if they were put in his place.

-I felt a strange nostalgia for the intellectual types. Beards, glasses, greasy hair, and clothing fashion which wasn't so different from everyone else but seems to consist more of dressing in clothes which were popular in older times and therefore legitimate because they were popular but subversive because they go against current fashion.

-the way that the artist passed up meeting his benefactor (the agent) after the wall came down and chose to write a book was touching. It was beautiful for the artist to turn him into a novel rather than use him as a priest who he could confess his feelings and guilt to.

-I don't know why but I like the villians who are fat/unattractive guys who using their power (implying that they obtained their power) in order to get sex. It seems to be a strong tradition in Eastern European society and one which has much honesty.

-I liked how the flaws of the artists were up for discussion.I like the way that the agent talked to the actress and that she was on drugs and didn't have confidence. Also, that the writer was "hysterical anthropocentrist" and needed to have people around and agreed that his friend was being too arrogant and deserved to have his travel visa to the West cancelled. In one way the movie seemed to want sympathy for the fact that artists had to bow down to the state in order to create but it never made them into great people.

-I also liked the scene where the agent was with his boss and a young official came in to tell a joke about the party leader. It really showed the feeling of what it is to live in socialism which really means to live under the caprice of individuals. Humour really must have walked a delicate line between allegiance to a state which consists of all too many lies and the necessary irony which any honest person must have towards this.


But all the things I liked didn't save the movie for me. The cinematography was dry, the characters were more symbols than people, and when I woke up today I only thought of the ideas in it and not the visuals. The central idea of the film takes place in the theatre after the wall comes down. Both the artist and the fat party official leave the play in order to get some respite from their feelings for the dead actress. The film-maker aligns himself with the fat official and says that we don't know what we lost in our little Republic -- even though we spent so much energy fighting the human spirit at least we considered it to be important.

stoicism

Stoicism emerges from decadence. Imagine that you have an aristocracy or an upper class which rules the merchants and peasants. Now imagine that you are in a position to see the ruler(s) from one generation to the next. Imagine you can see how one person could rule from natural authority and have the respect of others while the next ruler has only symbolic authority and none of the natural charisma or nobility. The time is decadent because the arrangements aren't made for values to be passed down through trials and tests. Now, you also notice that some other people don't even notice the change and still are just as servile to the ruler or assume the ruler capable of actions the old ruler performed when he clearly isn't. In short, you see that such people are beholden to the signifier and have immense blindspots in their interpersonal dealings with others. Since in decadence genius doens't necessarily beget genius or a moral man can have immoral children you can see the contingency of life and the irrationality of birthright when money or power are passed on through inheritance. The time is out of joint, and the person who would be able to rule and genuinely command respect doesn't even recognize their authority -- you realize there is no chance for you to change it. So you leave your community and begin to make a life that is outside the vagaries of money and power and something which isn't contingent... you become a stoic.

revisions about art

the first question in art

Did the person who made the piece make something that is an ideal for them or did they make something as a commentary on the ideals or lifestyle of others?

It's strange to think how much art (probably better called entertainment) is based upon finding the characters to be cool or them being something you want to be. The Matrix, Tarantino movies, Kevin Smith, Oceans 11, not to mention video games which are mostly this.... plus super-hero movies which are same things but for kids minds (though many adults could relate).

also related... at first interest in art comes directly from what is popular or what is passed on by the parents. Many people will betray what their parents gave them because it isn't popular when they are in school but then they will go back to it after they graduate and begin to feel closer to their parents then friends. But what interests me is neither of these instances because art isn't important to these people -- life is. What interests me is when a person decides they no longer like popular music, when they meet some 'non-conformists' and get excited on the prospect of being able to set themselves apart from the popular music fans and say they lack taste, complexity, etc... they attach themselves to some sub-culture and hold their cataogue to be the relevant one. However this game can still go on. When such a person meets other people who admire a similar sub-culture then from there he will begin a process of either saying that he likes some popular music and he's not really fully in the sub-culture or getting deeper into the fringe acts of the sub-culture (he can say that other people in the sub-culture like the 'popular' music of that sub-culture).

the second question in art

Does the artist present us with opposites or does he give us a something manifold?
Ascending art represents the manifold that the artist has tapped into (think Tarkovsky and Fellini and the world they give us). Opposites (good and evil, hero and villian, etc.) are more interesting in a certain sense because it offers to a riddle to be solved, why can't the artist overcome the contrasts he presents us (don't say the world is really that way because there is always a higer perspective from which the elements can synthesize). In this way art imitates life because the average person who is sick is more interesting than the healthy person who is the exception (though this value hardly redeems them in comparison).


Also related... when you can see that the person must make the painting, or film, or song about the exception and something rare that it's an idea of difference and not feeling different at work. The bad artist has to paint the rarest landscape while the real artist can paint something normal (almost cliche) and tease out all the subtlety.

pan's labrynth cont.

down to my central point

The pure child wouldn't have eaten the fruit and would have shed the blood of its sibling (the director got it wrong). Ofelia's story is about a child who is helpless with what concerns her parents and the adult world and therefore she dreams a world where she can have an effect. She made the dream-- the nobility in her-- and if a sacrifice was what it called for then she would have done it (to save her mother's life or her ownl life so she could have gone on to save her mother). Instead we are presented with the idea that the fantasy was something different, a test by her dead father, something morbid and somewhat cruel.

pan's labrynth (cont.)

A friend pointed out to me that the revolutionaries are the third element and was surprised to see I neglected them in my review. Maybe she is right, but their stogory isn't the focus and they are only introduced in a generic, negation of the existing regime, way. The story, if there would be any, would be the servant woman who helps the revolutionaries because her brother is numbered among them. The servant isn't following the law (the father) and is the only representation of the feminine in any active sense... but, I don't think we are presented with any growth or change in her character and thus she isn't the story (but along with several other characters i.e. the doctor) could have been more but why talk about what could have been? It's not the story.

review Pan's Labrynth

The overwhelming impression at the end is that it was written for someone. "For those who know where to look there are still signs of her". He can still see the signs of that someone and the remark must have been self-referential because he never showed us a way to look for her in our world.

Pan’s labyrinth... it’s called a fairy tale for adults

The question is: why this mixture of innocence and purity with the horrible and cruel? Why doesn’t the writer reconcile the two (which side can’t he understand and therefore portray them both as separate?).

The answer isn’t cruelty... it is the innocence he can’t deal with.

The innocence is what must become mythical while the cruelty is what he deals with in ‘reality’.

The story of the child isn’t the centre story but is given equal weight with the corresponding "real events". The child’s story is equal with the story of the captain but both their stories are really the stories of their loyalty to their fathers.

Ofileia remains true to her father and doesn’t address the captain as her father.

The captain too stays true to his father by disowning his father legacy and the watch (at the dinner table he denies the story).

Ofelia disobeys Pan and eats the fruit (and kills 2 fairies), it is not because of her purity that she is rewarded by seeing her father at the end. The writer doesn’t understand innocence. Ofelia is rewarded by her father by following the ‘law’ of not harming others (she won’t even spill a drop of her brother’s blood). However, this following of the law (of not harming others at all) makes her into the captain. As the Doctor says to the captain "only men like you can obey without questioning." Ofelia too obeys without question but in doing so she isn’t innocent or pure because these things don’t follow laws (in the end only cruelty does).

We don’t take the captain to be ‘evil’ once we find out that he is only following the laws of his father. He is only cruel. He only wanted to be like his father and when we see that he wanted to pass on his father’s watch to his son we know that he too endured much misery with his burden (but he didn’t know who he could be without it; this is the law of cruelty). His wish to have a son is the wish to see the debt-fulfilled and an admission it remains unfulfilled. (The captain kills the father and the son who were only out rabbit hunting on account of the son making excessive appeals of his father’s innocence; this is why the writer understands cruelty and not innocence).

If you pay attention the captain was never a part of Ofelia’s life. He was never cruel to her. She missed dinner and came back with a soiled dress but she wasn’t punished for it. The two stories never cross paths but each is the shadow of the other. The girl is the one who fulfills her father’s debt while the captain doesn’t. The captain is the one who had power while the girl was powerless in hers. Additionally, both mothers in the story are absent. We find out nothing of the captain’s mother and Ofelia’s mother is only the plaything of outside powers, with no will of her own. It is in the feminine that innocence and purity exists and this is more evidence the writer doesn’t understand it.

We finish the story with the death of the one father (because the captain’s child didn’t receive the watch) and the little girl returning to the side of her father who represent’s the law of God.
This fairy tale for adults is only a return to the Judaeo-Christian legacy. Though it is dressed up in the fur of paganism underneath is the cold inhuman law of the father.

the second question in art

Does the artist present us with opposites or does he give us a something manifold?
Ascending art represents the manifold that the artist has tapped into (think Tarkovsky and Fellini and the world they give us). Descending art is more interesting in a certain sense because it offers to a riddle to be solved, why can't the artist overcome the contrasts he presents us (don't say the world is really that way because there is always a higer perspective from which the elements can synthesize). In this way art imitates life because the average person who is sick is more interesting than the healthy person who is the exception (though this value hardly redeems them in comparison).