Although they are presumed to be on the wrong side of history, thousands upon thousands of folks were actually opposed to the disintegration of the USSR and the states in its orbit. Instead, for lots of complex personal reasons they embraced the ideology of socialism and were distraught when the capitalists descended…ripping their narrative to shreds. And then many more came to grasp through first hand experience the enormous gap that can exist between the promise that was “freedom and democracy” and the reality of a political economy that simply uses people [and then uses them up] in order that a small percentage of the population are able to exploit the overwhelming majority who now found themselves living from paycheck to paycheck—if they could find employment at all. One kind of corruption was merely replaced by another. And a grand historical narrative [in theory anyway] is replaced by lifestyles revolving around wealth and consumption.
In other words, only in the minds of the objectivists and the libertarians…the idealists…is capitalism all it’s stacked up to be. For the rest, the only thing that’s stacked is the deck itself.
Only that’s not really what this movie is about at all.
Here we have a woman who has told her children that her husband had abandoned the family and the nation. In order to “recover” she throws herself all the more into embracing the fatherland [and socialism]. But then she has a heart attack and falls into a coma. When she finally comes to the GDR is no more. What to do? Well, with her health at stake, it’s simple: create the illusion that all is as it was before. How hard can that be?
Only problem is, it was all predicated largely on a lie. A heartbreaking lie. A terrible truth though about the world we live in. About the choices we are forced to make in order to accomodate ourselves to a world ever in strife.
The story is loosely based on the last two years of V.I. Lenin’s life, living in a controlled environment similar to what is portrayed in the film. With the justification that over-excitement might cause Lenin health problems, Joseph Stalin had printed for him one-copy edition newspapers, censored of all news about the political struggles of the time. IMDb
Good Bye Lenin!
Alexander [voiceover]: While Sigmund Jahn was intrepidly representing our country in space, my father was getting his brains fucked out by his new “enemy of the state” girlfriend. He never came back. My mother was so depressed she stopped talking. She just didn’t speak. Not to us. Not to anyone.
Or so he was told.
Alexander [voiceover]: She slept while Ariane quit studying economic theory…and gained her first practical experience with monetary circulation.
Ariane: “Enjoy your meal and thanks for choosing Burger King.”
Alexander [voiceover]: Mother slept through the triumph of capitalism…
We should be so lucky.
Dr. Wagner: You must protect her from any kind of excitement. And I do mean any kind, Mr. Kerner.
Alexander: Any kind of excitement.
Dr. Wagner: It would be life-threatening.
Alexander: And this here?
[he shows the doctor a newspaper reading “Good Luck, Germany. Yes to Reunification”]
Alexander: Wouldn’t you call this exciting?
See where this is going?
Mom [watching through the window as workers unfurl a huge “DRINK COCA COLA” banner on the building acroos the street]: Alex, what is that?!
That’s when she learns that Coca Cola was actually invented in the GDR.
Alexander [voiceover]: Life in our little country kept getting faster. We were all like tiny atoms in a huge particle accelerator. But sheltered from the fast pace of the new time was an oasis of calm.
Let's create one here. Aside from logging out.
Alexander [voiceover]: Somehow my scheme had taken on a life of its own. The GDR I created for her increasingly became the one I might have wished for.
Communism for one let's call it.
Alexander: There he was, my childhood idol, like a ghost from my past: Sigmund Jähn. Not signing autographs, not telling kids about the secrets of the universe, the freedom of weightlessness, and the infinite reaches of space. He was driving a tiny, smelly Lada taxi.
Sigmund Jähn: Where to?
Alexander: Wannsee
Sigmund Jähn: I know what you think. Everyone does. But I’m not him.
Don't bet on it.
Sigmund Jähn [in a fictional address as the new head-of-state of the GDR]: Dear citizens of the German Democratic Republic… If you’ve lived to see the wonder of watching our blue planet from the depths of the cosmos, you see things differently. Up there, in the depths of space, the people’s lives seem small and insignificant. Our German Democratic Republic seems tiny. You ask yourself what humanity has accomplished. Which objectives did we set, which objectives did we realize? Today is our country’s anniversary. It’s a very little country, seen from the cosmos. But still thousands of people came to us last year. People who we looked to as enemies and who want to live with us today. We know our country is not perfect. But what we believe in, inspired a lot of people in the whole world. Maybe we have drifted off course from time to time. But we collected ourselves. Socialism doesn’t mean walling yourself in. Socialism means reaching out to others, and living with others. Not just to dream about a better world, but to make a better world. I have therefore decided to open the GDR borders.
Sure, why not.
Alexander [voiceover]: My mother outlived the GDR by three days. I believe it was a good thing she never learned the truth. She died happy. She wanted us to scatter her ashes to the winds. That’s prohibited in Germany, both East and West. But we didn’t care. She’s up there somewhere now. Maybe looking down at us. Maybe she sees us as tiny specks on the Earth’s surface, just like Sigmund Jähn did back then. The country my mother left behind was a country she believed in; a country we kept alive till her last breath; a country that never existed in that form; a country that, in my memory, I will always associate with my mother.
A fluke in other words.
Quote of the day
-
FrankGSterleJr
- Posts: 228
- Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2011 6:41 pm
Re: Quote of the day
The greatest gift life offers many people is that someday, likely preferably sooner rather than later, they get to die. Perhaps worsening matters for them is when suicide is simply not an option, for whatever reason(s), meaning there’s little hope of receiving an early reprieve from their literal life sentence.
Therefore, being reincarnated would be considered Hell for many of them, as it would be for me — the repetition of mostly unhappiness. From my understanding, Buddhism [or is it Zen Buddhism?], which in large part is the positive belief in reincarnation, acknowledges that life generally is suffering, or hardship interspersed with genuine happiness.
Ergo, to quote passages of a poem:
.
I awoke from another very bad dream, a reincarnation nightmare / where having thankfully died I’m still bullied towards rebirth back into human form / despite my pleas I be allowed to rest in permanent peace. // ...
... // Each second that passes I should not have to repeat and suffer again. / I cry out ‘give me a real purpose and it’s not enough simply to live / nor that it’s a beautiful sunny day with colorful fragrant flowers!’ //
I’m tormented hourly by my desire for both contentedness and emotional, material and creative gain / that are unattainable yet ultimately matter naught. My own mind brutalizes me like it has / a sadistic mind of its own. I must have a progressive reason for this harsh endurance! //
Could there be people who immensely suffer yet convince themselves they sincerely want to live when in fact / they don’t want to die, so greatly they fear Death’s unknown? //
No one should ever have to repeat and suffer again a single second that passes. / Nay, I will engage and embrace the dying of my blight!
Therefore, being reincarnated would be considered Hell for many of them, as it would be for me — the repetition of mostly unhappiness. From my understanding, Buddhism [or is it Zen Buddhism?], which in large part is the positive belief in reincarnation, acknowledges that life generally is suffering, or hardship interspersed with genuine happiness.
Ergo, to quote passages of a poem:
.
I awoke from another very bad dream, a reincarnation nightmare / where having thankfully died I’m still bullied towards rebirth back into human form / despite my pleas I be allowed to rest in permanent peace. // ...
... // Each second that passes I should not have to repeat and suffer again. / I cry out ‘give me a real purpose and it’s not enough simply to live / nor that it’s a beautiful sunny day with colorful fragrant flowers!’ //
I’m tormented hourly by my desire for both contentedness and emotional, material and creative gain / that are unattainable yet ultimately matter naught. My own mind brutalizes me like it has / a sadistic mind of its own. I must have a progressive reason for this harsh endurance! //
Could there be people who immensely suffer yet convince themselves they sincerely want to live when in fact / they don’t want to die, so greatly they fear Death’s unknown? //
No one should ever have to repeat and suffer again a single second that passes. / Nay, I will engage and embrace the dying of my blight!
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
What counted back then was less what was true and more what was believed to be true. In other words, pretty much the way things still are today. At least regarding these things: the role of government, the anchor of ethnicity, the viscissitudes of wealth and power, the options afforded a particular gender or a particular race, the reach of religion, the scale of corruption.
Of course we are a lot more civilized about these things now.
What is always intriguing in conflicts like this is the tug of war between the True Believers and the opportunists. Especially regarding those who claim to be of the first but are really of the latter. It’s always easier for them to switch sides if necessary. They simply announce to the world that they have changed their minds.
Bill and the Priest. Men harboring the same principles but different faiths according to Bill. It’s all just bullshit to me. My people vs. your people. Native Americans [the white ones] vs. everybody else. It’s all crap. Summed up this way by Bill: “I don’t see no Americans. I see trespassers, Irish harps. Do a job for a nickel what a n***** does for a dime and a white man used to get a quarter for.”
Not only are they there to be exploited economically but you can stir up the pot and have them all going after each other as the cause for the misery they endure. Sooner or later all the religious strife, nativist sentiments and tribal [gang] warfare comes down to that.
God is everywhere here. But make no mistake about it: it’s Old Testament right down to the bone.
This by no means reflected all of New York. The Five Points was smack dab in the middle of the working class. There were other “sections” of the city that were nothing like this at all. But then came the draft riots:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_draft_riots
When the film was first conceived in 1978, Martin Scorsese originally planned to cast Dan Aykroyd as Amsterdam Vallon and John Belushi as Bill ‘The Butcher’ Cutting. The project fell apart after Belushi died.
Most of the gangs mentioned by name were real 19th century New York gangs. Bill “The Butcher” Cutting is based largely on real-life New York gang leader Bill Poole, who also was known as “The Butcher” and had much the same prestige as Daniel Day-Lewis’ character.
The draft riots depicted in the film are largely accurate, but the real-life Bill “The Butcher” Poole (the basis for Daniel Day-Lewis’ character) was killed several years before the riots took place.
To make sure his facts were accurate, Martin Scorsese contacted Tyler Anbinder, a professor of history at George Washington University and author of the book “Five Points”.
Martin Scorsese hired “The Magician”, an Italian man famous for a 30-year career as a pickpocket, to teach Cameron Diaz about the art of picking pockets.
Bill the Butcher has a scene with every main and supporting character in the film, a symbol of his vast influence in the Five Points.
Daniel Day-Lewis became so uncomfortable with the greasy hairstyle he wore as Bill the Butcher, that immediately after filming completed, he shaved his head.
Bill’s last words, “I die a true American”, were the last words of his true-life counterpart, Bill Poole. IMDb
Gangs of New York
Priest Vallon: Well, well, Monk! Are you with us or not?
Monk: For the last time Vallon, only if the money is right.
Priest Vallon: I’ll give you 10 per notch.
Monk: 10?
Priest Vallon: You have my word.
Monk: 10 per notch.
Priest Vallon: Per new notch.
Monk: Then I’m your man.
On the other hand...
"Mercenaries are useless, disunited, unfaithful
They have nothing more to keep them in a battle
Other than a meager wage
Which is just about enough to make them wanna kill for you
But never enough to make them wanna die for ya"
Priest Vallon: Let it be known, that the hand that tries to strike us from this land shall be swiflty cut down!
Bill: Then may the Christian Lord, guide my hand, against your Roman popery!
Priest Vallon: Prepare to receive the true Lord!
Of course, that still going on.
Amsterdam [voiceover]: When the Irish came, the city was in a fever. Since the time of the great famine they’d come streaming off the boats. And they got a right warm welcome.
Native: “Go back to Ireland, you dumb Micks!”
Is that still going on?
Tweed: Street construction, repairs and sweeping. Business and saloon licenses…Streetcars, ferries, rubbish disposal. There’s a tower of money to be made in this city, Bill. With your help, the people must be made to understand that all these things are best kept, in what I like to call the Tammany family. That is why I am talking about an alliance between our organizations.
Bill: You’re talking about muscle work.
Tweed: That too. Muscle to match our spirit.
Bill: You own the crushers, get them to do it.
Tweed: The police? Oh, no! Jezus,no! The appearance of the law must be upheld. Especially while it’s been broken.
Indeed!
Amsterdam [voiceover]: Everywhere you went, people talked about the daft. Now, you could buy your way out for 300 dollars. But who had 300 dollars? For us it might just as well have been 3 million.
Next up: college deferments.
Amsterdam [voiceover]: For every lay we had a different name. An Angler put a hook on the end of a stick to drop behind store windows and doors. An Autumn diver picked your pocket in church. A Badger, gets a fellow in bed with a girl and robs his pockets when they’re on the go. Jenny was a Bludger a girl pickpocket. And a Turtle dove. A Turtle dove goes uptown dressed like a housemaid. Picks out a fine house and goes right through the back door. Robs you blind. It takes a lot of sand to be a Turtle dove.
For every lay here?
Tweed: Bill, I can’t get a days work done for all the good citizens coming in here to harass me about crime in the Points. Some even go so far as to accuse Tammany of connivance in this so-called rampant criminality. What am I to do? I can’t have this. Something has to be done.
Bill: What do you have in mind?
Tweed: I don’t know. I think maybe we should hang someone.
Bill: Who?
Tweed: No one important, necessarily. Average men will do. Back-alley amusers with no affiliations.
Bill: How many?
Tweed: Three or four.
Bill: Which?
Tweed: Four.
Realpolitik let's call it.
Tweed: That’s the building of our country right there, Mr. Cutting. Americans aborning.
Bill: I don’t see no Americans. I see trespassers, Irish harps. Do a job for a nickel what a n***** does for a dime and a white man used to get a quarter for. What have they done? Name one thing they’ve contributed.
Tweed: Votes.
Bill: Votes, you say? They vote how the archbishop tells them, and who tells the archbishop? Their king in the pointy hat what sits on his throne in Rome.
And that's before we get to the Muslims and the Jews, of course.
Tweed: Bill, deliver these good and fervent folk to the polls. And there will be a handsome price for each vote that goes Tammany’s way.
Bill: My father gave his life making this country what it is. Murdered by the British, with all of his men, July 25, 1814. You think I’m going to help you, befoul his legacy? By giving this country to them who’s had no hand in fighting for it. Why? Because they come off the boat crawling with lice and begging you for soup?
Tweed: You’re a great one for the fighting Bill, I know but you can’t fight forever.
Bill: I can go down doing it.
That's for sure.
Army Recruiter [swearing in Irish immigrants as citizens at the harbor]: That document makes you a citizen, and this one makes you a private in the Union army. Now get out there and serve your country.
Die for it even.
Bill: Rhythms of the dark continent, thrown into the kettle with an Irish shindig. Stir it around a few times. Poured out as a fine American mess. A jig, doing a jig!
Bill being Bill, of course.
Bill: How old are you, Amsterdam?
Amsterdam: I’m not sure, sir. I never did quite figure it.
Bill: I’m forty-seven. Forty-seven years old. You know how I stayed alive this long? All these years? Fear. The spectacle of fearsome acts. Somebody steals from me, I cut off his hands. He offends me, I cut out his tongue. He rises against me, I cut off his head, stick it on a pike, raise it high up so all on the streets can see. That’s what preserves the order of things. Fear.
Let's Trump that.
Monk [to Amsterdam]: My father was killed in battle, too. In Ireland, in the streets, fighting those who would take as their privilege what could only be got and held by the decimation of a race. That war is a thousand years old and more. We never expected it to follow us here. It didn’t. It was waiting for us when we landed. Your father tried to carve out a corner of this land for his tribe. That was him, that was his dead rabbits. I often wondered… if he had lived a bit longer, would he have wanted a bit more?
Didn't they all?
Amsterdam [voiceover]: The earth turns, but we don’t feel it move. And one night you look up. One spark and the whole sky is on fire.
And most of what's down here too.
Tweed: I’m offering my boy, to form an alliance with you against Bill Cutting and his slate of Native candidates. I’ll negotiate a handsome fee, for every Irish vote you send Tammany’s way, in the coming elections. I need a new friend in the Five Points, son. I’d like that friend to be you.
Amsterdam: Now just a moment, Mr. Tweed. Suppose we do get you those votes. Would you back an Irish candidate of my choosing…
Tweed: I don’t think so.
Amsterdam: What if we get you all the Irish votes?
Tweed: Mr. Vallon, that will only happen in the reign of Queen Dick!
Amsterdam: Beg your pardon?
Tweed: That means it will never happen. Now I might be persuaded to back an Irish candidate for, let’s say, alderman.
Jenny: Alderman? We’ve already got an Irish alderman.
Tweed: So we have, that’s why…
Amsterdam: What’s bigger than an alderman? Sheriff! Sheriff! Alright, Mr Tweed, you back an Irishman for sheriff of the city and county of New York and we’ll get him elected.
Tweed: I love the Irish, son but higher than alderman you shall never climb.
Cue: William Russell Grace.
Killoran: Monk’s already won by three thousand more votes than there are voters.
Tweed: Only three? Make it twenty, thirty. We don’t need a victory. We need a Roman triumph.
Killoran: But we don’t have any more ballots.
Tweed: Remember the first rule of politics. The ballots don’t make the results, the counters make the results. The counters. Keep counting.
Next up: the first rule here.
[the draft riot is spreading]
Tweed: It may be worse yet, sir. I saw them. I don’t know what to think…
Mr. Schermerhorn: What is it you are so fond of saying, Mr. Tweed? Mr. Greely, you won’t like this…but what is it?
Tweed: I don’t remember.
Mr. Schermerhorn: You said, “You can always hire one half of the poor to kill the other half.”
Or course he's only paraphrasing Jay Gould.
Tweed: Tomorrow morning get our people down to the docks. I want every man and woman coming off the boats given hot soup and bread. We’re burying a lot of votes here tonight.
And not all of them six feet under.
Amsterdam [voiceover]: In the end, they put candles on the bodies so’s their friends, if they had any, could know them in the dark. The city did this free of charge. Shang, Jimmy Spoils, Hell-cat, McGloin, and more. Friend or foe, didn’t make no difference now. It was four days and nights before the worst of the mob was finally put down. We never knew how many New Yorkers died that week before the city was finally delivered. My father told me we was all born of blood and tribulation, and so then too was our great city. But for those of us what lived and died in them furious days, it was like everything we knew was mightily swept away. And no matter what they did to build this city up again…for the rest of time…it would be like no one ever knew we was even here.
On the other hand, the more things change?
Of course we are a lot more civilized about these things now.
What is always intriguing in conflicts like this is the tug of war between the True Believers and the opportunists. Especially regarding those who claim to be of the first but are really of the latter. It’s always easier for them to switch sides if necessary. They simply announce to the world that they have changed their minds.
Bill and the Priest. Men harboring the same principles but different faiths according to Bill. It’s all just bullshit to me. My people vs. your people. Native Americans [the white ones] vs. everybody else. It’s all crap. Summed up this way by Bill: “I don’t see no Americans. I see trespassers, Irish harps. Do a job for a nickel what a n***** does for a dime and a white man used to get a quarter for.”
Not only are they there to be exploited economically but you can stir up the pot and have them all going after each other as the cause for the misery they endure. Sooner or later all the religious strife, nativist sentiments and tribal [gang] warfare comes down to that.
God is everywhere here. But make no mistake about it: it’s Old Testament right down to the bone.
This by no means reflected all of New York. The Five Points was smack dab in the middle of the working class. There were other “sections” of the city that were nothing like this at all. But then came the draft riots:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_draft_riots
When the film was first conceived in 1978, Martin Scorsese originally planned to cast Dan Aykroyd as Amsterdam Vallon and John Belushi as Bill ‘The Butcher’ Cutting. The project fell apart after Belushi died.
Most of the gangs mentioned by name were real 19th century New York gangs. Bill “The Butcher” Cutting is based largely on real-life New York gang leader Bill Poole, who also was known as “The Butcher” and had much the same prestige as Daniel Day-Lewis’ character.
The draft riots depicted in the film are largely accurate, but the real-life Bill “The Butcher” Poole (the basis for Daniel Day-Lewis’ character) was killed several years before the riots took place.
To make sure his facts were accurate, Martin Scorsese contacted Tyler Anbinder, a professor of history at George Washington University and author of the book “Five Points”.
Martin Scorsese hired “The Magician”, an Italian man famous for a 30-year career as a pickpocket, to teach Cameron Diaz about the art of picking pockets.
Bill the Butcher has a scene with every main and supporting character in the film, a symbol of his vast influence in the Five Points.
Daniel Day-Lewis became so uncomfortable with the greasy hairstyle he wore as Bill the Butcher, that immediately after filming completed, he shaved his head.
Bill’s last words, “I die a true American”, were the last words of his true-life counterpart, Bill Poole. IMDb
Gangs of New York
Priest Vallon: Well, well, Monk! Are you with us or not?
Monk: For the last time Vallon, only if the money is right.
Priest Vallon: I’ll give you 10 per notch.
Monk: 10?
Priest Vallon: You have my word.
Monk: 10 per notch.
Priest Vallon: Per new notch.
Monk: Then I’m your man.
On the other hand...
"Mercenaries are useless, disunited, unfaithful
They have nothing more to keep them in a battle
Other than a meager wage
Which is just about enough to make them wanna kill for you
But never enough to make them wanna die for ya"
Priest Vallon: Let it be known, that the hand that tries to strike us from this land shall be swiflty cut down!
Bill: Then may the Christian Lord, guide my hand, against your Roman popery!
Priest Vallon: Prepare to receive the true Lord!
Of course, that still going on.
Amsterdam [voiceover]: When the Irish came, the city was in a fever. Since the time of the great famine they’d come streaming off the boats. And they got a right warm welcome.
Native: “Go back to Ireland, you dumb Micks!”
Is that still going on?
Tweed: Street construction, repairs and sweeping. Business and saloon licenses…Streetcars, ferries, rubbish disposal. There’s a tower of money to be made in this city, Bill. With your help, the people must be made to understand that all these things are best kept, in what I like to call the Tammany family. That is why I am talking about an alliance between our organizations.
Bill: You’re talking about muscle work.
Tweed: That too. Muscle to match our spirit.
Bill: You own the crushers, get them to do it.
Tweed: The police? Oh, no! Jezus,no! The appearance of the law must be upheld. Especially while it’s been broken.
Indeed!
Amsterdam [voiceover]: Everywhere you went, people talked about the daft. Now, you could buy your way out for 300 dollars. But who had 300 dollars? For us it might just as well have been 3 million.
Next up: college deferments.
Amsterdam [voiceover]: For every lay we had a different name. An Angler put a hook on the end of a stick to drop behind store windows and doors. An Autumn diver picked your pocket in church. A Badger, gets a fellow in bed with a girl and robs his pockets when they’re on the go. Jenny was a Bludger a girl pickpocket. And a Turtle dove. A Turtle dove goes uptown dressed like a housemaid. Picks out a fine house and goes right through the back door. Robs you blind. It takes a lot of sand to be a Turtle dove.
For every lay here?
Tweed: Bill, I can’t get a days work done for all the good citizens coming in here to harass me about crime in the Points. Some even go so far as to accuse Tammany of connivance in this so-called rampant criminality. What am I to do? I can’t have this. Something has to be done.
Bill: What do you have in mind?
Tweed: I don’t know. I think maybe we should hang someone.
Bill: Who?
Tweed: No one important, necessarily. Average men will do. Back-alley amusers with no affiliations.
Bill: How many?
Tweed: Three or four.
Bill: Which?
Tweed: Four.
Realpolitik let's call it.
Tweed: That’s the building of our country right there, Mr. Cutting. Americans aborning.
Bill: I don’t see no Americans. I see trespassers, Irish harps. Do a job for a nickel what a n***** does for a dime and a white man used to get a quarter for. What have they done? Name one thing they’ve contributed.
Tweed: Votes.
Bill: Votes, you say? They vote how the archbishop tells them, and who tells the archbishop? Their king in the pointy hat what sits on his throne in Rome.
And that's before we get to the Muslims and the Jews, of course.
Tweed: Bill, deliver these good and fervent folk to the polls. And there will be a handsome price for each vote that goes Tammany’s way.
Bill: My father gave his life making this country what it is. Murdered by the British, with all of his men, July 25, 1814. You think I’m going to help you, befoul his legacy? By giving this country to them who’s had no hand in fighting for it. Why? Because they come off the boat crawling with lice and begging you for soup?
Tweed: You’re a great one for the fighting Bill, I know but you can’t fight forever.
Bill: I can go down doing it.
That's for sure.
Army Recruiter [swearing in Irish immigrants as citizens at the harbor]: That document makes you a citizen, and this one makes you a private in the Union army. Now get out there and serve your country.
Die for it even.
Bill: Rhythms of the dark continent, thrown into the kettle with an Irish shindig. Stir it around a few times. Poured out as a fine American mess. A jig, doing a jig!
Bill being Bill, of course.
Bill: How old are you, Amsterdam?
Amsterdam: I’m not sure, sir. I never did quite figure it.
Bill: I’m forty-seven. Forty-seven years old. You know how I stayed alive this long? All these years? Fear. The spectacle of fearsome acts. Somebody steals from me, I cut off his hands. He offends me, I cut out his tongue. He rises against me, I cut off his head, stick it on a pike, raise it high up so all on the streets can see. That’s what preserves the order of things. Fear.
Let's Trump that.
Monk [to Amsterdam]: My father was killed in battle, too. In Ireland, in the streets, fighting those who would take as their privilege what could only be got and held by the decimation of a race. That war is a thousand years old and more. We never expected it to follow us here. It didn’t. It was waiting for us when we landed. Your father tried to carve out a corner of this land for his tribe. That was him, that was his dead rabbits. I often wondered… if he had lived a bit longer, would he have wanted a bit more?
Didn't they all?
Amsterdam [voiceover]: The earth turns, but we don’t feel it move. And one night you look up. One spark and the whole sky is on fire.
And most of what's down here too.
Tweed: I’m offering my boy, to form an alliance with you against Bill Cutting and his slate of Native candidates. I’ll negotiate a handsome fee, for every Irish vote you send Tammany’s way, in the coming elections. I need a new friend in the Five Points, son. I’d like that friend to be you.
Amsterdam: Now just a moment, Mr. Tweed. Suppose we do get you those votes. Would you back an Irish candidate of my choosing…
Tweed: I don’t think so.
Amsterdam: What if we get you all the Irish votes?
Tweed: Mr. Vallon, that will only happen in the reign of Queen Dick!
Amsterdam: Beg your pardon?
Tweed: That means it will never happen. Now I might be persuaded to back an Irish candidate for, let’s say, alderman.
Jenny: Alderman? We’ve already got an Irish alderman.
Tweed: So we have, that’s why…
Amsterdam: What’s bigger than an alderman? Sheriff! Sheriff! Alright, Mr Tweed, you back an Irishman for sheriff of the city and county of New York and we’ll get him elected.
Tweed: I love the Irish, son but higher than alderman you shall never climb.
Cue: William Russell Grace.
Killoran: Monk’s already won by three thousand more votes than there are voters.
Tweed: Only three? Make it twenty, thirty. We don’t need a victory. We need a Roman triumph.
Killoran: But we don’t have any more ballots.
Tweed: Remember the first rule of politics. The ballots don’t make the results, the counters make the results. The counters. Keep counting.
Next up: the first rule here.
[the draft riot is spreading]
Tweed: It may be worse yet, sir. I saw them. I don’t know what to think…
Mr. Schermerhorn: What is it you are so fond of saying, Mr. Tweed? Mr. Greely, you won’t like this…but what is it?
Tweed: I don’t remember.
Mr. Schermerhorn: You said, “You can always hire one half of the poor to kill the other half.”
Or course he's only paraphrasing Jay Gould.
Tweed: Tomorrow morning get our people down to the docks. I want every man and woman coming off the boats given hot soup and bread. We’re burying a lot of votes here tonight.
And not all of them six feet under.
Amsterdam [voiceover]: In the end, they put candles on the bodies so’s their friends, if they had any, could know them in the dark. The city did this free of charge. Shang, Jimmy Spoils, Hell-cat, McGloin, and more. Friend or foe, didn’t make no difference now. It was four days and nights before the worst of the mob was finally put down. We never knew how many New Yorkers died that week before the city was finally delivered. My father told me we was all born of blood and tribulation, and so then too was our great city. But for those of us what lived and died in them furious days, it was like everything we knew was mightily swept away. And no matter what they did to build this city up again…for the rest of time…it would be like no one ever knew we was even here.
On the other hand, the more things change?
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Philosophy
“Thought's a luxury. Do you think the peasant sits and thinks of God and Democracy when he gets inside his mud hut at night?” Graham Greene
Uh, not likely?
“There is but one true philosophical problem and that is suicide.” Albert Camus
How's that working out for you?
“We are living in the era of premeditation and the perfect crime. Our criminals are no longer helpless children who could plead love as their excuse. On the contrary, they are adults and the have the perfect alibi: philosophy, which can be used for any purpose - even for transforming murderers into judges.” Albert Camus
And, alas, not just up in the fucking clouds.
“We look for the Secret - the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of the Wise, Supreme Enlightenment, 'God' or whatever...and all the time it is carrying us about...It is the human nervous system itself.” Robert Anton Wilson
If you get his drift. Though, as it turns out, that's not really necessary at all.
I hope it is not necessary for me to stress the platonic nature of our relationship- not platonic in the purest sense, there was no philosophical discourse, but we certainly didn't fuck, which is usually what people mean by platonic; which I bet would really piss Plato off, that for all his thinking and chatting his name has become an adjective for describing sexless trysts.” Russell Brand
Go figure?
“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? --- Who watches the watchmen?” Alan Moore
All the way down, for example.
“Thought's a luxury. Do you think the peasant sits and thinks of God and Democracy when he gets inside his mud hut at night?” Graham Greene
Uh, not likely?
“There is but one true philosophical problem and that is suicide.” Albert Camus
How's that working out for you?
“We are living in the era of premeditation and the perfect crime. Our criminals are no longer helpless children who could plead love as their excuse. On the contrary, they are adults and the have the perfect alibi: philosophy, which can be used for any purpose - even for transforming murderers into judges.” Albert Camus
And, alas, not just up in the fucking clouds.
“We look for the Secret - the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of the Wise, Supreme Enlightenment, 'God' or whatever...and all the time it is carrying us about...It is the human nervous system itself.” Robert Anton Wilson
If you get his drift. Though, as it turns out, that's not really necessary at all.
I hope it is not necessary for me to stress the platonic nature of our relationship- not platonic in the purest sense, there was no philosophical discourse, but we certainly didn't fuck, which is usually what people mean by platonic; which I bet would really piss Plato off, that for all his thinking and chatting his name has become an adjective for describing sexless trysts.” Russell Brand
Go figure?
“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? --- Who watches the watchmen?” Alan Moore
All the way down, for example.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
The gang is all here. Only 17 years earlier. I suppose I should have deconstructed them in the proper order but that’s not where they ended up on the shelf.
Not that this means much to the barbarians. They will always be around. As will those who make such distinctions: The intellectuals. Here the names of philosophers pop up from time to time. So it’s good to know the new generation [back then and each that follows] is willing to keep the flame burning. Up on the screen in other words and not just inside the Hallowed Halls.
The sort of film where nothing much happens at all. Instead, folks inclined to pursuits of the mind mostly jostle back and forth…ruminating on the meaning of it all. Not perhaps as rigorously as a philosopher might but still largely “up there”. And when it does come down here it is usually in reference to fucking. And here, apparently, boys will be boys…and girls will be boys too. And the men are always the butt of the women's jokes and the women of the men's.
Towards the end of it all you begin to grasp more clearly why the empires are in decline.
And cynical? Oh yeah. Until, say, you start pissing blood.
The Decline of the American Empire [Le Déclin de L’Empire Américain]
Remy [the one who died in The Barbarian Invasions]: Three things are important in history. First off, numbers. Secondly, numbers. And thirdly, numbers. This means, for example, that the blacks in South Africa are bound to win some day while North American blacks will probably never make it. History is not a moral science. Legality, compassion, justice…such notions are foreign to history.
Or, in any event, to the ruling class.
Diane: You’re chairman of the history department and you’ve just published Changing Concepts of Happiness. Can you tell us about it.
Dominique: It’s my premise that the concept of personal happiness permeates the literature of a nation or a civilization as its influence wanes.
Diane: What do you mean by personal happiness?
Dominique: The expectation of receiving instant gratification in daily life…and that this gratification constitutes the normative parameter of eistence.
Diane: Can you give us a concrete example?
Dominique: Take marriage for instance. In stable societies, marriage is a mode of economic exchange or a unit of production.
Diane: Meaning?
Dominique: The success of a marriage doesn’t depend on the personal happiness of the two individuals. The issue never even comes up. A developing society places greater importance on the collective good, or future happiness than on personal satisfaction. In Rome, for example, the idea of conjugal love first prevails in the third century, under Diocletian – as the empire is collapsing. And in Europe, Rousseau’s idea of happiness ushered in the French Revolution. So I pose the question: Is the frantic drive for personal happiness we see in society today linked to the decline of the American Empire?
Do you need it to be? And whether this is true or not may well pale next to the fact that things like this can be thought of in ways very few of us ever pursue. Is it all just intellectual hogwash or is there really something to it?
Pierre [to Remy]: Love – the kind that makes your heart race, makes you send flowers – lasts two years at best. Then the compromises begin.
Not to mention the affairs.
Pierre [to Remy and Claude]: I divorced for purely physical reasons. I was scared to death of the phone. When you have affairs the poor things are bound to fall in love. It was awful knowing that one day one of them would ring me at home. Every time the phone rang my heart skipped a beat.
Fatal attractions lety's call them.
Claude: The only time I feel alive is when I’m cruising. It’s incredible. I become crazed…electrified. It’s dangerous. A friend was stabbed in the shower. But I can’t help it. Some nights I just have to fuck someone…anyone. Like an alley cat on the prowl. The urge is overwhelming.
Not many things that won't explain.
Pierre: Wittgenstein wrote that our only certainty is the ability to act with the body. If I’m in love I get hard. If I don’t get hard, I’m not in love. Otherwise you are deceiving yourself. Like a woman who says she still loves you when she is dry as sandpaper. And you remember how she’d be dripping if you so much as kissed her on the neck.
Not many things that won't explain.
Pierre: Think about it, back then marriages lasted on average 15 years.
Louise: You should write a paper on that.
Pierre: 17,000 scholarly arlicles are published each day.
Mario: I’ve had enough of this.
Diane: We’re still eating.
Mario: This is a drag.
Diane: We’re talking.
Louise: Intellectuals love to talk.
Mario: All you do is talk. All afternoon the men went on about sex. I expected an orgy. Instead, the big thrill is a fish pie.
Louise: So what are you trying to say?
Mario: When I’m horny, I fuck.
Any thing that moves as they say. So, is this one the barbarian? Meanwhile, back to the intellectuals…
Dominique: Marx was your average middle-class German who fucked the maid behind his wife’s back. His theories are rooted in his sense of guilt. Same with Freud. A latent homosexual unable to lay his wife after the age 40 hot and bothered over his female patients. His quarrels with Jung were really about women…about sex.
Of course that's still going on.
Pierre [voiceover]: That’s when it happened. I fell head over heels in love. Ejaculating while discussing the millennium with a history student…it was intellectually and physically overwhelming.
A shade of Woody Allen’s, “the whores of Mensa”.
Dominique [on tape]: Signs of the empire’s decline are everywhere. Society despises its own institutions, the birth rate keeps dropping, men refuse to serve in the army, the national debt is out of control, the work week is getting shorter, the bureaucracies are rampant, the elites are in decay. With the decline of the Marxist-Leninist dream no model exists which we can say, “this is how we want to live.” In our personal lives – unless one is mystic or a saint – there are no models to live by. Our very existence is being eroded.
Hell, no one ever gets it all right.
Louise [reacting to the tape]: Well, I don’t agree. I’m sure there are experts who can prove just the opposite—that we are living in an age of incredible rebirth, that science has never progressed so fast, that life has never been better. It’s impossible to really understand the age you live in. All you can do is try to be happy. That’s what people have always wanted. The rest invent theories to justify their misery.[/quote]
Thank God for the clouds, right?
Not that this means much to the barbarians. They will always be around. As will those who make such distinctions: The intellectuals. Here the names of philosophers pop up from time to time. So it’s good to know the new generation [back then and each that follows] is willing to keep the flame burning. Up on the screen in other words and not just inside the Hallowed Halls.
The sort of film where nothing much happens at all. Instead, folks inclined to pursuits of the mind mostly jostle back and forth…ruminating on the meaning of it all. Not perhaps as rigorously as a philosopher might but still largely “up there”. And when it does come down here it is usually in reference to fucking. And here, apparently, boys will be boys…and girls will be boys too. And the men are always the butt of the women's jokes and the women of the men's.
Towards the end of it all you begin to grasp more clearly why the empires are in decline.
And cynical? Oh yeah. Until, say, you start pissing blood.
The Decline of the American Empire [Le Déclin de L’Empire Américain]
Remy [the one who died in The Barbarian Invasions]: Three things are important in history. First off, numbers. Secondly, numbers. And thirdly, numbers. This means, for example, that the blacks in South Africa are bound to win some day while North American blacks will probably never make it. History is not a moral science. Legality, compassion, justice…such notions are foreign to history.
Or, in any event, to the ruling class.
Diane: You’re chairman of the history department and you’ve just published Changing Concepts of Happiness. Can you tell us about it.
Dominique: It’s my premise that the concept of personal happiness permeates the literature of a nation or a civilization as its influence wanes.
Diane: What do you mean by personal happiness?
Dominique: The expectation of receiving instant gratification in daily life…and that this gratification constitutes the normative parameter of eistence.
Diane: Can you give us a concrete example?
Dominique: Take marriage for instance. In stable societies, marriage is a mode of economic exchange or a unit of production.
Diane: Meaning?
Dominique: The success of a marriage doesn’t depend on the personal happiness of the two individuals. The issue never even comes up. A developing society places greater importance on the collective good, or future happiness than on personal satisfaction. In Rome, for example, the idea of conjugal love first prevails in the third century, under Diocletian – as the empire is collapsing. And in Europe, Rousseau’s idea of happiness ushered in the French Revolution. So I pose the question: Is the frantic drive for personal happiness we see in society today linked to the decline of the American Empire?
Do you need it to be? And whether this is true or not may well pale next to the fact that things like this can be thought of in ways very few of us ever pursue. Is it all just intellectual hogwash or is there really something to it?
Pierre [to Remy]: Love – the kind that makes your heart race, makes you send flowers – lasts two years at best. Then the compromises begin.
Not to mention the affairs.
Pierre [to Remy and Claude]: I divorced for purely physical reasons. I was scared to death of the phone. When you have affairs the poor things are bound to fall in love. It was awful knowing that one day one of them would ring me at home. Every time the phone rang my heart skipped a beat.
Fatal attractions lety's call them.
Claude: The only time I feel alive is when I’m cruising. It’s incredible. I become crazed…electrified. It’s dangerous. A friend was stabbed in the shower. But I can’t help it. Some nights I just have to fuck someone…anyone. Like an alley cat on the prowl. The urge is overwhelming.
Not many things that won't explain.
Pierre: Wittgenstein wrote that our only certainty is the ability to act with the body. If I’m in love I get hard. If I don’t get hard, I’m not in love. Otherwise you are deceiving yourself. Like a woman who says she still loves you when she is dry as sandpaper. And you remember how she’d be dripping if you so much as kissed her on the neck.
Not many things that won't explain.
Pierre: Think about it, back then marriages lasted on average 15 years.
Louise: You should write a paper on that.
Pierre: 17,000 scholarly arlicles are published each day.
Mario: I’ve had enough of this.
Diane: We’re still eating.
Mario: This is a drag.
Diane: We’re talking.
Louise: Intellectuals love to talk.
Mario: All you do is talk. All afternoon the men went on about sex. I expected an orgy. Instead, the big thrill is a fish pie.
Louise: So what are you trying to say?
Mario: When I’m horny, I fuck.
Any thing that moves as they say. So, is this one the barbarian? Meanwhile, back to the intellectuals…
Dominique: Marx was your average middle-class German who fucked the maid behind his wife’s back. His theories are rooted in his sense of guilt. Same with Freud. A latent homosexual unable to lay his wife after the age 40 hot and bothered over his female patients. His quarrels with Jung were really about women…about sex.
Of course that's still going on.
Pierre [voiceover]: That’s when it happened. I fell head over heels in love. Ejaculating while discussing the millennium with a history student…it was intellectually and physically overwhelming.
A shade of Woody Allen’s, “the whores of Mensa”.
Dominique [on tape]: Signs of the empire’s decline are everywhere. Society despises its own institutions, the birth rate keeps dropping, men refuse to serve in the army, the national debt is out of control, the work week is getting shorter, the bureaucracies are rampant, the elites are in decay. With the decline of the Marxist-Leninist dream no model exists which we can say, “this is how we want to live.” In our personal lives – unless one is mystic or a saint – there are no models to live by. Our very existence is being eroded.
Hell, no one ever gets it all right.
Louise [reacting to the tape]: Well, I don’t agree. I’m sure there are experts who can prove just the opposite—that we are living in an age of incredible rebirth, that science has never progressed so fast, that life has never been better. It’s impossible to really understand the age you live in. All you can do is try to be happy. That’s what people have always wanted. The rest invent theories to justify their misery.[/quote]
Thank God for the clouds, right?
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Of course most folks watched this only because there was so much at stake legally. For all of us. They fast-forwarded the nudity and the sex stuff. Or simply turned away from the screen.
Larry Flynt versus the people. Fortunately for him there are lots of different kinds of people out there. Which means lots of different opinions about pornography. And he was lucky enough to be around just as more and more folks were willing not only to tolerate it but to pay lots of money to, uh, use it.
Men, for example.
Sex. How are we to come down on this one? We shouldn’t have the government poking around in the affairs of consenting adults. What about our civil liberties? But what adults consent to do sexually can raise all sorts of thorny questions regarding gender and orientation and exploitation. Or even how much of it is really consensual at all.
Oh, and what about the children?!
Community standards versus the Bill of Rights. Somewhere between the two lies the answer. Meaning of course there is no answer at all. Just a whole bunch of conflicting and contradictory opinions about what the answer should be. And you know where I come down here.
And then the surreal encounter between Flynt and Ruth Carter. Between Flynt and the Lord. Did that really happen?! And the part where Flynt channels R.P. McMurphy. True?
Flynt is one of those characters you truly disdain. For some things. But for other things you thank your lucky stars that he is around [and rich enough, infamous enough] to expose and then to mock some of the same folks you wish that you could too/
Larry Flynt and his brother Jimmy Flynt are played by real-life brothers Woody Harrelson and Brett Harrelson.
The insurance fees for Courtney Love were so high, the studio would not pay them. Woody Harrelson, the producers (Oliver Stone and Michael Hausman), the director (Milos Forman) and Love paid the fees out-of-pocket.
The closing argument by Edward Norton was taken verbatim from Alan L. Isaacman’s actual closing arguments. Isaacman revealed this in a documentary of the film.
One scene involves Hustler’s offer of a $1 million reward for bringing JFK’s killers to justice. The father of actors Woody Harrelson and Brett Harrelson has long been suspected by conspiracy theorists of involvement in the assassination. IMDb
Huh?
The People vs. Larry Flint
Flynt: Who is that?
Jimmy: That’s the new girl. She got the moves, don’t she?
Flynt: She ain’t bad. She ain’t legal either.
Jimmy: Yes, she is. I saw her I. D.
Flynt: Look, you stupid briar-hopper, my dog could get an I. D. … from my goat.
Briar-hopper?
Althea: That’s the problem with you men. Your batteries run out. We women, our batteries never run out. We could go on and on.
Flynt: Well, then go fuck a woman.
Althea: “Go fuck a woman.” I do fuck women.
Flynt: Excuse me?
Althea: You are not the only person in this club to have had every woman in this club.
Figures, right?
Flynt: Who is Playboy magazine for, anyway? I mean, it’s like if you don’t make $20,000 plus a year you don’t jerk off. Seven million people buying it, and nobody’s reading it. Gentlemen, Playboy is mocking you.
Me? Well, the occasional interview, of course.
Althea: Take off your pants.
Flynt: What?
Althea: Take off your pants.
Flynt: Why?
Althea: Because I’ve never fucked a millionaire before.
Or, these days, a billionaire of course.
Mom: Larry, who are all these people?
Flynt: These are my friends, Ma. Lots of money, lots of friends.
Not at all like things are here. So far.
Flynt: Who are you?
Alan: Alan Isaacman. I’m your lawyer. Your bail is all taken care of…but we oughta talk about the case.
Flynt: Wait. Who hired you?
Alan: Your wife.
Flynt: My wife?
Alan: Yeah.
Flynt: Are you doin’ her?
No one's not doing her, Larry.
Simon Leis: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Before we begin, I must apologize for the unpleasantness of this task. What you are about to see is going to take your breath away. Hustler magazine depicts men and women posed together in a lewd and shameful manner. Hustler magazine depicts women and women posed in a lewd and shameful manner. Hustler magazine depicts Santa Claus posed in a lewd and shameful manner.
Ever notice that yourself?
Jury foreperson: We, the jury… find the defendant, Larry Claxton Flynt guilty as charged on all counts.
Judge [who is played by Larry Flynt]: Do you have anything to say before I sentence you?
Flynt: Your Honor…you’ve not made one intelligent decision during the course of this trial and I don’t expect one now. Knock yourself out.
A TKO we'll call it.
Flynt: Now, I have a message for all you good, moral, Christian people who are complaining that breasts and vaginas are obscene. Don’t complain to me. Complain to the manufacturer.[/b]
God, in other words.
Flynt: You know, politicians and demagogues like to say that sexually explicit material corrupts the youth of our country. And yet they lie, cheat and start unholy wars.
[he points to marching soldiers on a jumbo screen]
Flynt: Look at them. They call themselves men. They’re sheep in a herd. I think the real obscenity comes from raising our youth to believe that sex is bad and ugly and dirty and yet it is heroic to go spill guts and blood in the most ghastly manner in the name of humanity. With all the taboos attached to sex it’s no wonder we have the problems we have…that we’re angry and violent and genocidal. But ask yourself the question…What is more obscene, sex or war?
Has that actually been pinned down yet? Of course sexism [turning a woman into a piece of meat…an object existing solely for sexual gratification] doesn’t enter into it.
Althea: I had an epiphany once, Larry. When my daddy shot my entire family in the head, and I was the only one to identify the bodies, and I was sent to an orphanage full of good Christian nuns who shoved my face into their pussies with their crucifixes for eight goddamn years!
What's wrong with this picture?
Alan: Listen, I’m sitting here with the eminently reasonable District Attorney of the state of Georgia. He’s very impressed by your conversion, he wants to cut us a plea bargain.
Flynt: A plea bargain? Because I’ve found God?
Alan: Larry, listen to me for a second: Don’t argue with me on this, ok. Just say yes because I’ve pulled a lot of strings to make this happen.
Flynt: Is he sitting there with you?
Alan: Yes, he is.
Flynt: Would you do me a favor? Just tell that miserable old gray-haired bastard to go fuck himself, we’re going to trial.
Alan: Ok, right.
Flynt: Oh, and praise the lord.
He almost forgot, didn't he?
Prosecutor: Mr. Flynt, how can you, as a good Christian defend this filth?
Flynt: I don’t have to. It may be wrong, in some people’s opinion to portray women the way I have…but it’s not illegal. It may not be smart to have too much to drink, but it’s not illegal. Abortion may be morally repugnant…but right now it’s not illegal. If we want to change the laws, that’s another discussion…but our right to decide for ourselves cannot be restricted. George Orwell said that if liberty means anything it means the right to tell people what they don’t wanna hear.
Tell me about it! Here, in other words.
Flynt [in the hospital after being shot and paralyzed]: I feel like I’m in hell.
Ruth Carter: No, you’re not in hell. You belong to God.
Flynt: I wish he’d killed me. I do. I can’t ever walk again. I can’t make love to my wife. I can’t have a child with her.
Ruth Carter: But don’t give in to the bitterness. You’ll be so much stronger if you keep your faith. God will see you through this.
Flynt: Ruth…there is no God.
Not only that but shit happens.
Court Clerk: Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Flynt: No.
Judge Mantke: No?
Flynt: Your honor, I’m an atheist. I can’t very well, uh, swear to a God I don’t believe exists.
Judge Mantke: Mr. Flynt, you are a handful.
Flynt: I know, your honor.
Something, perhaps, we can all agree on?
Judge Mantke: Is that an American flag you have on there, sir?
Flynt: I have fashioned this American flag into a diaper…because if you’re gonna treat me like a baby, I’m gonna act like one.
Judge Mantke: Larry Flynt, I’m ordering you arrested for desecration of the American flag. Marshal, take him into custody.
And the equvalent of that here?
Flynt [wearing a t-shirt that says FUCK THIS COURT]: I do apologize, Your Honor. I want to 'fess up and reveal my source.
Judge Mantke: Tell me…who was the source of this videotape?
Flynt: The samurai.
Judge Mantke: Excuse me?
Flynt: The samurai gave me the tape.
Judge Mantke: Who is this man, and where is he?
Flynt: Unfortunately, he had a critical groin injury…on the way to give me the tape…and he’s undergoing acupuncture treatment in Beijing, China.
Judge Mantke: Mr. Flynt, this court fears that you are seriously mentally ill.[/b]
Just out of curiosity, was he?
Falwell: What?
Grutman: Yeah, Jerry, he’s suing you.
Falwell: He’s suing me? For heaven’s sakes, on what grounds?
Grutman: Well, you xeroxed his ad, and you sent it out in a million fundraiser letters.
Falwell: Yeah, so?
Grutman: But you didn’t get his permission. And that’s copyright infringement.
Falwell: The depth of his depravity sickens me.
Technicalities, let's call them.
Alan: Larry, thousands of people every year petition the Supreme Court, OK? Thousands.
Flynt: Yeah, and our case is as good as any.
Alan: Our case is better than most, you’re missing my point, and that is they will never pick you. Because you’re a nightmare. They’re afraid if they let you in there, you’re gonna wear a diaper, or throw oranges at the justices, and they should be, Larry, because in all the times you’ve gone to the court asking for help, you’ve never once demonstrated any respect for its institutions and procedures.
As though it deserves any.
Larry Flynt versus the people. Fortunately for him there are lots of different kinds of people out there. Which means lots of different opinions about pornography. And he was lucky enough to be around just as more and more folks were willing not only to tolerate it but to pay lots of money to, uh, use it.
Men, for example.
Sex. How are we to come down on this one? We shouldn’t have the government poking around in the affairs of consenting adults. What about our civil liberties? But what adults consent to do sexually can raise all sorts of thorny questions regarding gender and orientation and exploitation. Or even how much of it is really consensual at all.
Oh, and what about the children?!
Community standards versus the Bill of Rights. Somewhere between the two lies the answer. Meaning of course there is no answer at all. Just a whole bunch of conflicting and contradictory opinions about what the answer should be. And you know where I come down here.
And then the surreal encounter between Flynt and Ruth Carter. Between Flynt and the Lord. Did that really happen?! And the part where Flynt channels R.P. McMurphy. True?
Flynt is one of those characters you truly disdain. For some things. But for other things you thank your lucky stars that he is around [and rich enough, infamous enough] to expose and then to mock some of the same folks you wish that you could too/
Larry Flynt and his brother Jimmy Flynt are played by real-life brothers Woody Harrelson and Brett Harrelson.
The insurance fees for Courtney Love were so high, the studio would not pay them. Woody Harrelson, the producers (Oliver Stone and Michael Hausman), the director (Milos Forman) and Love paid the fees out-of-pocket.
The closing argument by Edward Norton was taken verbatim from Alan L. Isaacman’s actual closing arguments. Isaacman revealed this in a documentary of the film.
One scene involves Hustler’s offer of a $1 million reward for bringing JFK’s killers to justice. The father of actors Woody Harrelson and Brett Harrelson has long been suspected by conspiracy theorists of involvement in the assassination. IMDb
Huh?
The People vs. Larry Flint
Flynt: Who is that?
Jimmy: That’s the new girl. She got the moves, don’t she?
Flynt: She ain’t bad. She ain’t legal either.
Jimmy: Yes, she is. I saw her I. D.
Flynt: Look, you stupid briar-hopper, my dog could get an I. D. … from my goat.
Briar-hopper?
Althea: That’s the problem with you men. Your batteries run out. We women, our batteries never run out. We could go on and on.
Flynt: Well, then go fuck a woman.
Althea: “Go fuck a woman.” I do fuck women.
Flynt: Excuse me?
Althea: You are not the only person in this club to have had every woman in this club.
Figures, right?
Flynt: Who is Playboy magazine for, anyway? I mean, it’s like if you don’t make $20,000 plus a year you don’t jerk off. Seven million people buying it, and nobody’s reading it. Gentlemen, Playboy is mocking you.
Me? Well, the occasional interview, of course.
Althea: Take off your pants.
Flynt: What?
Althea: Take off your pants.
Flynt: Why?
Althea: Because I’ve never fucked a millionaire before.
Or, these days, a billionaire of course.
Mom: Larry, who are all these people?
Flynt: These are my friends, Ma. Lots of money, lots of friends.
Not at all like things are here. So far.
Flynt: Who are you?
Alan: Alan Isaacman. I’m your lawyer. Your bail is all taken care of…but we oughta talk about the case.
Flynt: Wait. Who hired you?
Alan: Your wife.
Flynt: My wife?
Alan: Yeah.
Flynt: Are you doin’ her?
No one's not doing her, Larry.
Simon Leis: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Before we begin, I must apologize for the unpleasantness of this task. What you are about to see is going to take your breath away. Hustler magazine depicts men and women posed together in a lewd and shameful manner. Hustler magazine depicts women and women posed in a lewd and shameful manner. Hustler magazine depicts Santa Claus posed in a lewd and shameful manner.
Ever notice that yourself?
Jury foreperson: We, the jury… find the defendant, Larry Claxton Flynt guilty as charged on all counts.
Judge [who is played by Larry Flynt]: Do you have anything to say before I sentence you?
Flynt: Your Honor…you’ve not made one intelligent decision during the course of this trial and I don’t expect one now. Knock yourself out.
A TKO we'll call it.
Flynt: Now, I have a message for all you good, moral, Christian people who are complaining that breasts and vaginas are obscene. Don’t complain to me. Complain to the manufacturer.[/b]
God, in other words.
Flynt: You know, politicians and demagogues like to say that sexually explicit material corrupts the youth of our country. And yet they lie, cheat and start unholy wars.
[he points to marching soldiers on a jumbo screen]
Flynt: Look at them. They call themselves men. They’re sheep in a herd. I think the real obscenity comes from raising our youth to believe that sex is bad and ugly and dirty and yet it is heroic to go spill guts and blood in the most ghastly manner in the name of humanity. With all the taboos attached to sex it’s no wonder we have the problems we have…that we’re angry and violent and genocidal. But ask yourself the question…What is more obscene, sex or war?
Has that actually been pinned down yet? Of course sexism [turning a woman into a piece of meat…an object existing solely for sexual gratification] doesn’t enter into it.
Althea: I had an epiphany once, Larry. When my daddy shot my entire family in the head, and I was the only one to identify the bodies, and I was sent to an orphanage full of good Christian nuns who shoved my face into their pussies with their crucifixes for eight goddamn years!
What's wrong with this picture?
Alan: Listen, I’m sitting here with the eminently reasonable District Attorney of the state of Georgia. He’s very impressed by your conversion, he wants to cut us a plea bargain.
Flynt: A plea bargain? Because I’ve found God?
Alan: Larry, listen to me for a second: Don’t argue with me on this, ok. Just say yes because I’ve pulled a lot of strings to make this happen.
Flynt: Is he sitting there with you?
Alan: Yes, he is.
Flynt: Would you do me a favor? Just tell that miserable old gray-haired bastard to go fuck himself, we’re going to trial.
Alan: Ok, right.
Flynt: Oh, and praise the lord.
He almost forgot, didn't he?
Prosecutor: Mr. Flynt, how can you, as a good Christian defend this filth?
Flynt: I don’t have to. It may be wrong, in some people’s opinion to portray women the way I have…but it’s not illegal. It may not be smart to have too much to drink, but it’s not illegal. Abortion may be morally repugnant…but right now it’s not illegal. If we want to change the laws, that’s another discussion…but our right to decide for ourselves cannot be restricted. George Orwell said that if liberty means anything it means the right to tell people what they don’t wanna hear.
Tell me about it! Here, in other words.
Flynt [in the hospital after being shot and paralyzed]: I feel like I’m in hell.
Ruth Carter: No, you’re not in hell. You belong to God.
Flynt: I wish he’d killed me. I do. I can’t ever walk again. I can’t make love to my wife. I can’t have a child with her.
Ruth Carter: But don’t give in to the bitterness. You’ll be so much stronger if you keep your faith. God will see you through this.
Flynt: Ruth…there is no God.
Not only that but shit happens.
Court Clerk: Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Flynt: No.
Judge Mantke: No?
Flynt: Your honor, I’m an atheist. I can’t very well, uh, swear to a God I don’t believe exists.
Judge Mantke: Mr. Flynt, you are a handful.
Flynt: I know, your honor.
Something, perhaps, we can all agree on?
Judge Mantke: Is that an American flag you have on there, sir?
Flynt: I have fashioned this American flag into a diaper…because if you’re gonna treat me like a baby, I’m gonna act like one.
Judge Mantke: Larry Flynt, I’m ordering you arrested for desecration of the American flag. Marshal, take him into custody.
And the equvalent of that here?
Flynt [wearing a t-shirt that says FUCK THIS COURT]: I do apologize, Your Honor. I want to 'fess up and reveal my source.
Judge Mantke: Tell me…who was the source of this videotape?
Flynt: The samurai.
Judge Mantke: Excuse me?
Flynt: The samurai gave me the tape.
Judge Mantke: Who is this man, and where is he?
Flynt: Unfortunately, he had a critical groin injury…on the way to give me the tape…and he’s undergoing acupuncture treatment in Beijing, China.
Judge Mantke: Mr. Flynt, this court fears that you are seriously mentally ill.[/b]
Just out of curiosity, was he?
Falwell: What?
Grutman: Yeah, Jerry, he’s suing you.
Falwell: He’s suing me? For heaven’s sakes, on what grounds?
Grutman: Well, you xeroxed his ad, and you sent it out in a million fundraiser letters.
Falwell: Yeah, so?
Grutman: But you didn’t get his permission. And that’s copyright infringement.
Falwell: The depth of his depravity sickens me.
Technicalities, let's call them.
Alan: Larry, thousands of people every year petition the Supreme Court, OK? Thousands.
Flynt: Yeah, and our case is as good as any.
Alan: Our case is better than most, you’re missing my point, and that is they will never pick you. Because you’re a nightmare. They’re afraid if they let you in there, you’re gonna wear a diaper, or throw oranges at the justices, and they should be, Larry, because in all the times you’ve gone to the court asking for help, you’ve never once demonstrated any respect for its institutions and procedures.
As though it deserves any.
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Ambrose Bierce
Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
And, for some, over and again.
The covers of this book are too far apart.
Like it needs covers at all, he noted.
Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
Not many that doesn't include here, of course.
Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy.
Next up: snivel.
Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.
Not all of them though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottery_jackpot_records
Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are not as they ought to be.
That'll never happen here of course. You know, once I'm gone.
Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
And, for some, over and again.
The covers of this book are too far apart.
Like it needs covers at all, he noted.
Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
Not many that doesn't include here, of course.
Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy.
Next up: snivel.
Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.
Not all of them though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottery_jackpot_records
Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are not as they ought to be.
That'll never happen here of course. You know, once I'm gone.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Incendies. Scorched. Destroyed by fire.
Some will take their mother’s dying wish more seriously than others. But not many such wishes will disclose a reality quite as startling as this one. What do we really know about the people who brought us into the world? Beyond what we are told, in other words. Especially folks with parents born and raised in the Middle East.
The first time you see Nawal – the look on her face – you just know she has a past savagely awash in turmoil. You wonder: What could bring about such an expression? You’re hooked. And then you’re numb.
And that is because you soon learn this turmoil is in turn brutally awash in the sheer stupidity of ethnic and religious dogma. With, for example, bringing “dishonor to the family”. We bear witness to some of the most idiotic and infantile of all the many blind prejudices. It gets people killed. And all in the name of “saving face”. Or God. It’s all so incredibly mindless. Just not to the ones with the guns.
Then this: How would you react if you found out you were the son and the daughter of a woman who had been repeatedly raped and tortured as a political prisoner. And that your father was the man who raped and tortured her? And that your father was also your brother—your mother’s first son. Think that through. Then remind yourselves just how ambiguous things like “moral responsibility” can become “out in the world”.
And then we discover the reason for that ravaged look on Nawal’s face.
There’s one coincidence too many here perhaps but the horror of war [in the Middle East especially] is all embedded in it.
Incendies
Jean [reading from the last will and testament of Nawal Marwan]: “Burial. Notary Jean Lebel will bury me without a coffin, naked and without prayers. My face turned towards the ground, my back against the world…Tombstone and Epitaph. No headstone is to be placed on my grave and my name engraved nowhere. No epitaph is deserved for those who do not keep their promises.”
Then:
“Jean, notary Lebel will hand you an envelope. This envelope is for your father. Find him and hand him the envelope. Simon, the notary will hand you an envelope. This envelope is for your brother. Find him and hand it to him. When these envelopes have been handed to their addressees, a letter will be given to you. When the silence is broken, and the promise kept a stone may be placed on my grave and my name engraved on the stone.”
What could possibly go wrong, right?
Niv: Mathematics as you have known so far have aimed to achieve a precise and definitive response to precise and definitive problems. Now, you are about to enter into entirely different adventure. The subject will be intractable problems that will always lead to other problems just as intractable. People around you will repeatedly insist that what you are doing is hopeless. You’ll have no argument to defend yourself, because they will be of an overwhelming complexity. Welcome to pure mathematics, the land of solitude and loneliness.
Next up: pure philosophy.
Grandma: You have humiliated us! You have sullied the name of our family! Why God have you plunged us in the dark? My God, what have you done? Why did you do that? What will I do with you? You want me to kill you?
Nawal: I’m pregnant, grandma.
Click, of course.
Rafqa: And Le Journal?
Father: Don’t be afraid. Le Journal can survive without us for a while.
Rafqa: But ideas only survive if someone is there to defend them!
Father: Exactly, Rafqa. Exactly.
Jeanne is his assistant. She will find there are other things this is applicable to.
Niv: What does your intuition tell you? Your intuition is always right. That’s why you got potential to becoming a real mathematician. But over there, you’ll need help. Do you have any family there? Contacts? You’ve come to learn that a) your father is alive; and b) you have another brother…You need to know. Otherwise, your mind will never be at peace.
On the other hand, mine still is.
Nawal [voiceover]: I arrived at the end of the massacre in the Deressa refugee camp. Everything was burning. I looked for my son amid the pools of blood.
No pools of blood here. Or, rather, none that I'm aware of.
Soldier: You claim to be against our enemy. That does not make you our friend. Why would Chamseddine trust you?
Nawal: My son’s father was a refugee from Deressa. My son has been swallowed by the war. I have nothing to lose. My hatred is great toward the Nationalists.
Soldier: This is not what you wrote in Charbel’s Journal.
Nawal: My uncle Charbel thought to encourage peace with words and books. I believed that. Life has taught me something else.
Soldier: What are you going to do now?
Nawal: Teach the enemy what life has taught me.
Only, here, it's all basically up in the fluffy white clouds.
Jeanne: I am looking for someone who knew her. Someone who could tell me about her. This is my mother.
Janitor: This is the woman who sings. Number 72. It was she who murdered the militia leader of the Christian right. They made her pay dearly. Very, very dearly. Fifteen years. They used to call her “the woman who sings” because she sang all the time.
Dirges?
Janitor: They did everything to make her break. In the end, she was still standing, She looked …She never broke. And then they sent Abu Tarek.
Jeanne: Who’s that?
Janitor: Abu Tarek…You know, sometimes it’s better not to know everything.
Jeanne: Sir, I live with it anyway. Continue.
Janitor: Abu Tarek…Abu Tarek was a investigation specialist. He specialized in torture. He raped her repeatedly to break her before being released. To stop her from singing. Eventually she became pregnant. It was like that. I’ll never forget it. Number 72 pregnant by Abu Tarek.
How to wrap your head around that, right?
Abu Tarek [reading a letter from “the woman who sings”]: “My hand is shaking while I am writing this. I recognized you. But you didn’t. It’s a wonderful miracle. I’m your number 72. This letter will be delivered by our children. You will not recognize them because they are beautiful, but they know who you are. Through them, I want to tell you you’re still alive. But soon, you’ll be quiet. I know. Because silence is all to the truth. Signed: The whore 72.
How to wrap your head around that, right?
Abu Tarek [to Nawal after torturing and raping her]: Now sing.
Gloomy Sunday.
Nihad Harmanni [reading a letter from his mother]: “I speak to my son. I am not speaking to the torturer. Whatever happens, I will always love you. That’s the promise I made you at birth, my son. Whatever happens, I will always love you. I’ve searched my whole life. I found you. You, you could not recognize me. You have your tattoo on the right heel. I’ve seen it. I recognized you. And I found you beautiful. I’ll remember you with all the sweetness of the world, my love. Console yourself because nothing is more beautiful than being together. You were born of love. Your brother and your sister were also born of love. Nothing is more beautiful than to be together.Your mother, Nawal Marwan. Prisoner number 72.”
What can it mean though to actually believe this?!!
Jeanne and Simon [reading from their mother’s letter]: “Where did your story begin? When you were born? Then she starts in horror. At the birth of your father? Then she begins a great love story.”
Their brother’s father was shot dead in front of their mother – to preserve the family’s “honor”.
Some will take their mother’s dying wish more seriously than others. But not many such wishes will disclose a reality quite as startling as this one. What do we really know about the people who brought us into the world? Beyond what we are told, in other words. Especially folks with parents born and raised in the Middle East.
The first time you see Nawal – the look on her face – you just know she has a past savagely awash in turmoil. You wonder: What could bring about such an expression? You’re hooked. And then you’re numb.
And that is because you soon learn this turmoil is in turn brutally awash in the sheer stupidity of ethnic and religious dogma. With, for example, bringing “dishonor to the family”. We bear witness to some of the most idiotic and infantile of all the many blind prejudices. It gets people killed. And all in the name of “saving face”. Or God. It’s all so incredibly mindless. Just not to the ones with the guns.
Then this: How would you react if you found out you were the son and the daughter of a woman who had been repeatedly raped and tortured as a political prisoner. And that your father was the man who raped and tortured her? And that your father was also your brother—your mother’s first son. Think that through. Then remind yourselves just how ambiguous things like “moral responsibility” can become “out in the world”.
And then we discover the reason for that ravaged look on Nawal’s face.
There’s one coincidence too many here perhaps but the horror of war [in the Middle East especially] is all embedded in it.
Incendies
Jean [reading from the last will and testament of Nawal Marwan]: “Burial. Notary Jean Lebel will bury me without a coffin, naked and without prayers. My face turned towards the ground, my back against the world…Tombstone and Epitaph. No headstone is to be placed on my grave and my name engraved nowhere. No epitaph is deserved for those who do not keep their promises.”
Then:
“Jean, notary Lebel will hand you an envelope. This envelope is for your father. Find him and hand him the envelope. Simon, the notary will hand you an envelope. This envelope is for your brother. Find him and hand it to him. When these envelopes have been handed to their addressees, a letter will be given to you. When the silence is broken, and the promise kept a stone may be placed on my grave and my name engraved on the stone.”
What could possibly go wrong, right?
Niv: Mathematics as you have known so far have aimed to achieve a precise and definitive response to precise and definitive problems. Now, you are about to enter into entirely different adventure. The subject will be intractable problems that will always lead to other problems just as intractable. People around you will repeatedly insist that what you are doing is hopeless. You’ll have no argument to defend yourself, because they will be of an overwhelming complexity. Welcome to pure mathematics, the land of solitude and loneliness.
Next up: pure philosophy.
Grandma: You have humiliated us! You have sullied the name of our family! Why God have you plunged us in the dark? My God, what have you done? Why did you do that? What will I do with you? You want me to kill you?
Nawal: I’m pregnant, grandma.
Click, of course.
Rafqa: And Le Journal?
Father: Don’t be afraid. Le Journal can survive without us for a while.
Rafqa: But ideas only survive if someone is there to defend them!
Father: Exactly, Rafqa. Exactly.
Jeanne is his assistant. She will find there are other things this is applicable to.
Niv: What does your intuition tell you? Your intuition is always right. That’s why you got potential to becoming a real mathematician. But over there, you’ll need help. Do you have any family there? Contacts? You’ve come to learn that a) your father is alive; and b) you have another brother…You need to know. Otherwise, your mind will never be at peace.
On the other hand, mine still is.
Nawal [voiceover]: I arrived at the end of the massacre in the Deressa refugee camp. Everything was burning. I looked for my son amid the pools of blood.
No pools of blood here. Or, rather, none that I'm aware of.
Soldier: You claim to be against our enemy. That does not make you our friend. Why would Chamseddine trust you?
Nawal: My son’s father was a refugee from Deressa. My son has been swallowed by the war. I have nothing to lose. My hatred is great toward the Nationalists.
Soldier: This is not what you wrote in Charbel’s Journal.
Nawal: My uncle Charbel thought to encourage peace with words and books. I believed that. Life has taught me something else.
Soldier: What are you going to do now?
Nawal: Teach the enemy what life has taught me.
Only, here, it's all basically up in the fluffy white clouds.
Jeanne: I am looking for someone who knew her. Someone who could tell me about her. This is my mother.
Janitor: This is the woman who sings. Number 72. It was she who murdered the militia leader of the Christian right. They made her pay dearly. Very, very dearly. Fifteen years. They used to call her “the woman who sings” because she sang all the time.
Dirges?
Janitor: They did everything to make her break. In the end, she was still standing, She looked …She never broke. And then they sent Abu Tarek.
Jeanne: Who’s that?
Janitor: Abu Tarek…You know, sometimes it’s better not to know everything.
Jeanne: Sir, I live with it anyway. Continue.
Janitor: Abu Tarek…Abu Tarek was a investigation specialist. He specialized in torture. He raped her repeatedly to break her before being released. To stop her from singing. Eventually she became pregnant. It was like that. I’ll never forget it. Number 72 pregnant by Abu Tarek.
How to wrap your head around that, right?
Abu Tarek [reading a letter from “the woman who sings”]: “My hand is shaking while I am writing this. I recognized you. But you didn’t. It’s a wonderful miracle. I’m your number 72. This letter will be delivered by our children. You will not recognize them because they are beautiful, but they know who you are. Through them, I want to tell you you’re still alive. But soon, you’ll be quiet. I know. Because silence is all to the truth. Signed: The whore 72.
How to wrap your head around that, right?
Abu Tarek [to Nawal after torturing and raping her]: Now sing.
Gloomy Sunday.
Nihad Harmanni [reading a letter from his mother]: “I speak to my son. I am not speaking to the torturer. Whatever happens, I will always love you. That’s the promise I made you at birth, my son. Whatever happens, I will always love you. I’ve searched my whole life. I found you. You, you could not recognize me. You have your tattoo on the right heel. I’ve seen it. I recognized you. And I found you beautiful. I’ll remember you with all the sweetness of the world, my love. Console yourself because nothing is more beautiful than being together. You were born of love. Your brother and your sister were also born of love. Nothing is more beautiful than to be together.Your mother, Nawal Marwan. Prisoner number 72.”
What can it mean though to actually believe this?!!
Jeanne and Simon [reading from their mother’s letter]: “Where did your story begin? When you were born? Then she starts in horror. At the birth of your father? Then she begins a great love story.”
Their brother’s father was shot dead in front of their mother – to preserve the family’s “honor”.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Meaning
“The ruinous abdication by philosophy of its rightful domain is the consequence of the oblivion of philosophers to a great insight first beheld clearly by Socrates and re-affirmed by Kant as by no other philosopher. Science, concerned solely and exclusively with objective existents, cannot give answers to questions about meanings and values. Only ideas engendered by the mind and to be found nowhere but in the mind (Socrates), only the pure transcendental forms supplied by reason (Kant), can secure the ideals and values and put us in touch with the realities that constitute our moral and spiritual life. Twenty-four centuries after Socrates, two centuries after Kant, we badly need to re-learn the lesson." D. R. Khashaba
Of course, this is where "I" come in, isn't it?
“Seduced by the spectacular theoretical and practical successes of the objective sciences into thinking that the methods and criteria of those sciences were the only means to truth, philosophers sought to apply those same methods and criteria to questions relating to the meaning of life and the values that give meaning to life. Philosophy, especially the Analytical species prevalent in the English-speaking world, was broken up into specialized disciplines and fragmented into particular problems, all swayed and impregnated by scientism, reductionism, and relativism. All questions of meaning and value were consigned to the rubbish heap of 'metaphysical nonsense'.” D. R. Khashaba
Of course, this is where "I" come in, isn't it?
“Religion is great at providing comfort as it attempts to describe the universe we live in, why we die, and why certain things happen. But like everything in life, we can only see and judge through our own eyes.” Rebecca Ryder
Comfort and consolation. Don't leave home without them.
“Literature is always good. Stories are particularly powerful because they support the illusion that life has direction and purpose. Where God fails to show his hand, the writer shows his. When so much around us seems meaningless, stories give meaning. Stories don’t judge, yet they teach us, nurture us and while life goes on, they do us the favour of ending.” Rebecca Ryder
So, how am I doing here?
“Reading is still both fundamental and essential. And what, above all, a teacher can communicate to you is what to read and how to read. How to read! For the art of reading is in danger of being lost.” Ludwig Lewisohn
Not counting the Bible?
“And indeed, why should we think words 'allow us to see,' when they were invented precisely to speak of what is not before our eyes and what cannot be pointed at with a finger? The most words can do (since they produce emotional effects) is to lead us to imagine.” Umberto Eco
Yeah, what about that?
“The ruinous abdication by philosophy of its rightful domain is the consequence of the oblivion of philosophers to a great insight first beheld clearly by Socrates and re-affirmed by Kant as by no other philosopher. Science, concerned solely and exclusively with objective existents, cannot give answers to questions about meanings and values. Only ideas engendered by the mind and to be found nowhere but in the mind (Socrates), only the pure transcendental forms supplied by reason (Kant), can secure the ideals and values and put us in touch with the realities that constitute our moral and spiritual life. Twenty-four centuries after Socrates, two centuries after Kant, we badly need to re-learn the lesson." D. R. Khashaba
Of course, this is where "I" come in, isn't it?
“Seduced by the spectacular theoretical and practical successes of the objective sciences into thinking that the methods and criteria of those sciences were the only means to truth, philosophers sought to apply those same methods and criteria to questions relating to the meaning of life and the values that give meaning to life. Philosophy, especially the Analytical species prevalent in the English-speaking world, was broken up into specialized disciplines and fragmented into particular problems, all swayed and impregnated by scientism, reductionism, and relativism. All questions of meaning and value were consigned to the rubbish heap of 'metaphysical nonsense'.” D. R. Khashaba
Of course, this is where "I" come in, isn't it?
“Religion is great at providing comfort as it attempts to describe the universe we live in, why we die, and why certain things happen. But like everything in life, we can only see and judge through our own eyes.” Rebecca Ryder
Comfort and consolation. Don't leave home without them.
“Literature is always good. Stories are particularly powerful because they support the illusion that life has direction and purpose. Where God fails to show his hand, the writer shows his. When so much around us seems meaningless, stories give meaning. Stories don’t judge, yet they teach us, nurture us and while life goes on, they do us the favour of ending.” Rebecca Ryder
So, how am I doing here?
“Reading is still both fundamental and essential. And what, above all, a teacher can communicate to you is what to read and how to read. How to read! For the art of reading is in danger of being lost.” Ludwig Lewisohn
Not counting the Bible?
“And indeed, why should we think words 'allow us to see,' when they were invented precisely to speak of what is not before our eyes and what cannot be pointed at with a finger? The most words can do (since they produce emotional effects) is to lead us to imagine.” Umberto Eco
Yeah, what about that?
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Years ago I had a relationship with a woman afflicted with agoraphobia. I mean home bound. Now I teeter myself…going right up to the edge from time to time. It’s one of the strangest things to have someone explain to you…or to have to explain to someone yourself.
Let’s face it, the human mind can have a mind all its own. Or seem to. At best you might find yourself haggling and negociating with it to get things done.
Of course back then we didn’t have a serial killer after us.
Serial killer? Talk about haggling and negociating with an alien mind. And the one crucial advantage most serial killers have [at least here in America] is this: it’s the criminal justice system that is after them.
What makes these guys [or some of them] scary is how fucking normal they can be or seem. To look at them and to interact with them they could be your next door neighbor [your friend] for years. How the hell do you protect yourself from them other than in isolating yourself from the world. Which ironically is what in fact does motivate some agoraphobics.
Copycat
Helen [giving a lecture]: Nine out of ten serial killers are white males, aged 20 to 35. Albert DeSalvo, Bianchi and Buono, Berkowitz, Dahmer, Bundy—they were quiet, unassuming, even nice. They had jobs. They made decent neighbors. Their victums trusted them.
We'll have to run this by Prom75 of course.
You first.
Helen [giving a lecture]: The FBI estimates there are up to 35 serial killers cruising for their next victums even as I speak.
No one here, he hoped.
Helen [to MJ and Reuben]: You can spare me the bullshit. You don’t admire me or even like me. None of you people do. But the beautiful part is I don’t give a fuck. That’s the upside of having a nervous breakdown.
Good to know?
MJ [to Reuben]: Quinn said she was a crackpot. He forgot to mention pill-popping, juice-head, hyperventilating, agoraphobic asshole.
And, as with most things of this sort, practice makes perfect.
Helen: It’s the Boston Strangler. He’s immitating Albert DeSalvo’s crime scene right down to the kinky details.
Reuben: Why De Salvo? Why not somebody in the news recently? Gacy or Raimirez?
Helen: I don’t know. These guys are like viruses. There’s always some new mutation.
Got a few here, he suspected.
Helen [to MJ]: You think he’s changed his routine? That doesn’t happen. These men are robotic. The murder’s like a ritual. The method is part of the pleasure.
Click, of course.
Helen [reading from the serial killer’s note]: “First you make a stone of your heart.” That’s the first step: dissassociation. He’s saying he’s suffered. Now it’s our turn. What made a stone of his heart? Usually it’s rejection or humiliation by a parent. Gacy’s father beat him for fun. Kemper’s mother locked him in a dark cellar when he reached puberty.
Click, of course.
Helen [to MJ]: Shit. He’s switched. From De Salvo to Bianchi and Buono. The Hillside Strangler.
MJ: Now he’s doing Son of Sam. Then Dahmer, then Bundy.
On the other hand...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... ted_States
Helen: He really wants us to think what he’s doing is art.
Don't be fooled yourself, okay?
MJ: He’s sending you letters like he is daring us to nail him.
Helen: If he wants to be famous, he has to be caught.
Tell that to Zodiac.
Helen: Here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty.
Guess what's coming next?
Peter: Did you know, Helen, that more books have been written about Jack the Ripper than Abraham Lincoln? It’s a sick world, isn’t it?
You tell me.
Peter [after Helen mocks him…then spits in his face]: OK, I see Helen. Nice try. You wanna know a little secret? Huh? I’m on to your trick. I won’t kill you fast no matter how much you’re gonna want me to.
Cue Holly!
Let’s face it, the human mind can have a mind all its own. Or seem to. At best you might find yourself haggling and negociating with it to get things done.
Of course back then we didn’t have a serial killer after us.
Serial killer? Talk about haggling and negociating with an alien mind. And the one crucial advantage most serial killers have [at least here in America] is this: it’s the criminal justice system that is after them.
What makes these guys [or some of them] scary is how fucking normal they can be or seem. To look at them and to interact with them they could be your next door neighbor [your friend] for years. How the hell do you protect yourself from them other than in isolating yourself from the world. Which ironically is what in fact does motivate some agoraphobics.
Copycat
Helen [giving a lecture]: Nine out of ten serial killers are white males, aged 20 to 35. Albert DeSalvo, Bianchi and Buono, Berkowitz, Dahmer, Bundy—they were quiet, unassuming, even nice. They had jobs. They made decent neighbors. Their victums trusted them.
We'll have to run this by Prom75 of course.
You first.
Helen [giving a lecture]: The FBI estimates there are up to 35 serial killers cruising for their next victums even as I speak.
No one here, he hoped.
Helen [to MJ and Reuben]: You can spare me the bullshit. You don’t admire me or even like me. None of you people do. But the beautiful part is I don’t give a fuck. That’s the upside of having a nervous breakdown.
Good to know?
MJ [to Reuben]: Quinn said she was a crackpot. He forgot to mention pill-popping, juice-head, hyperventilating, agoraphobic asshole.
And, as with most things of this sort, practice makes perfect.
Helen: It’s the Boston Strangler. He’s immitating Albert DeSalvo’s crime scene right down to the kinky details.
Reuben: Why De Salvo? Why not somebody in the news recently? Gacy or Raimirez?
Helen: I don’t know. These guys are like viruses. There’s always some new mutation.
Got a few here, he suspected.
Helen [to MJ]: You think he’s changed his routine? That doesn’t happen. These men are robotic. The murder’s like a ritual. The method is part of the pleasure.
Click, of course.
Helen [reading from the serial killer’s note]: “First you make a stone of your heart.” That’s the first step: dissassociation. He’s saying he’s suffered. Now it’s our turn. What made a stone of his heart? Usually it’s rejection or humiliation by a parent. Gacy’s father beat him for fun. Kemper’s mother locked him in a dark cellar when he reached puberty.
Click, of course.
Helen [to MJ]: Shit. He’s switched. From De Salvo to Bianchi and Buono. The Hillside Strangler.
MJ: Now he’s doing Son of Sam. Then Dahmer, then Bundy.
On the other hand...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... ted_States
Helen: He really wants us to think what he’s doing is art.
Don't be fooled yourself, okay?
MJ: He’s sending you letters like he is daring us to nail him.
Helen: If he wants to be famous, he has to be caught.
Tell that to Zodiac.
Helen: Here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty.
Guess what's coming next?
Peter: Did you know, Helen, that more books have been written about Jack the Ripper than Abraham Lincoln? It’s a sick world, isn’t it?
You tell me.
Peter [after Helen mocks him…then spits in his face]: OK, I see Helen. Nice try. You wanna know a little secret? Huh? I’m on to your trick. I won’t kill you fast no matter how much you’re gonna want me to.
Cue Holly!
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Epilepsy and God. But not necessarily in that order. And people with the best of intentions making the life of someone they truly love a living hell.
What do you say to them that might get through? I sometimes imagine myself in these situations. Given how I understand myself – “I” out in the world – is this something that might help or hinder them? The epilepsy is beyond my control. But the part about God isn’t. But: Is it better instead to root such afflictions in an essentially absurd and meaningless world?
As with Father Ralph de Bricassart and Meggie, Mom loves her daughter…but she loves God more. Or, perhaps, in this case, fears God more…or more than she can ever love a mere mortal.
And then there is also the question of her mental health. The voices and the hallucinations. And the part that God might play here [through the church] in making it worse.
You wonder: Was there ever the possibility of a happy ending here?
Years ago I used to get these terrible attacks of vertigo. Out of the blue [and virtually without warning] the whole world would spin violently about me. Impossible to describe. I never knew when or where they would happen. So I know something of the world she lived in. Fortunately, they stopped as myteriously as they began. But you are never entirely convinced they’re gone forever. On the other hand, I am reasonably sure it wasn’t the Devil. Though it's not like I can actually demonstrate this.
Based on the true story of Anneliese Michel, a 23-year-old student, who died of starvation after an exorcism in Miltenberg, Germany (1976). IMDb
Requiem
Michaela: I haven’t had anything in 6 months.
Marianne [mother reacting to the news that Michaela has been accepted into the university]: What did the doctor say?
Karl [father]: Marianne, that’s enough.
Marianne: What did he say?
Michaela: He said it can happen again any time.
And he was right.
Teacher [to Michaela]: Do you believe in the role model function of pedagogy?
Michaela: I don’t know.
Teacher: What do you believe in?
Michaela: In God.
[the class laughs]
Teacher: And you all find that amusing? Well, what do you believe in?
[nothing from the students.]
Teacher: You see? And that is exactly the problem.
Or, here, am "I" the actual problem?
Hanna [to Michaela]: Where were you? You were there until the 11th grade, then you disappeared.
No, not really.
Michaela [to Hanna]: Know how many doctors I’ve had? And in the end they have no idea. Diagnosis by exclusion. They try something to see if it works. Then you get new pills. Always new ones. Then new side effects and pills against them too.
The medical industrial complex, let's call it.
Father Borchert: Some use God as a kind of insurance company for bad times. The harvest should be good and business booming.
Michaela: Yes, that’s how people are.
Father Borchert: I wonder whether God’s existence is proven by a good harvest? Or by someone being sick? There’s a difference between suffering, spiritual need and superstition.
New thread?
Michaela: Let me go! Christ, help me! I’m not allowed to pray anymore!
Sounds like the Devil to me, alright.
Michaela: Maybe God has abandoned me. He doesn’t give a shit.
Father Borchert: He died for us on the cross. No one is excluded from His sacrifice. Not you, either. But we live in times where evil is very strong…always trying to get the upper hand.
Michaela: So why me? Why with me? I go to university. I try to do right. And God sends me demons.
Father Borchert: Because you are special. Your sensitivity to this godless work is strong.
It really doesn't matter what you tell them, only that they believe it.
Michaela: Prayer doesn’t help. The demons come when I want to pray. Why won’t God let me be happy? Am I being punished?
Father Borchert: God doesn’t punish. He tests those He loves the most.
She’s not buying it. It must be the Devil himself that is inside her. Let’s do an exorcism. In time though, even Michaela figures that’s what it probably is: the Devil. Get him the hell out.
Michaela [to Stephan]: I can’t touch the cross anymore, see?
And he's just found out why.
Hanna: It’s all about your madness here. How much longer will you go on?
Michaela: Until they’re driven out.
Hanna: Stop it! “They” will never be driven out because there’s nothing there, only youself. It’s only you. If’s it’s you they’re driving out where will it end?
Michaela: There's a reason for it all. I’m suffering for the greater good, for a higher purpose. Like St. Catharine, you know?
Hanna: What kind of reason is that? Michaela, listen to yourself, that’s not you!
Michaela: You can’t choose what God has in store for you. I must follow my path.
Right to the grave.
Title card: Following a series of several dozen exorcisms Michaela Klinger dies of exhaustion in her parents’ house.
Next!
What do you say to them that might get through? I sometimes imagine myself in these situations. Given how I understand myself – “I” out in the world – is this something that might help or hinder them? The epilepsy is beyond my control. But the part about God isn’t. But: Is it better instead to root such afflictions in an essentially absurd and meaningless world?
As with Father Ralph de Bricassart and Meggie, Mom loves her daughter…but she loves God more. Or, perhaps, in this case, fears God more…or more than she can ever love a mere mortal.
And then there is also the question of her mental health. The voices and the hallucinations. And the part that God might play here [through the church] in making it worse.
You wonder: Was there ever the possibility of a happy ending here?
Years ago I used to get these terrible attacks of vertigo. Out of the blue [and virtually without warning] the whole world would spin violently about me. Impossible to describe. I never knew when or where they would happen. So I know something of the world she lived in. Fortunately, they stopped as myteriously as they began. But you are never entirely convinced they’re gone forever. On the other hand, I am reasonably sure it wasn’t the Devil. Though it's not like I can actually demonstrate this.
Based on the true story of Anneliese Michel, a 23-year-old student, who died of starvation after an exorcism in Miltenberg, Germany (1976). IMDb
Requiem
Michaela: I haven’t had anything in 6 months.
Marianne [mother reacting to the news that Michaela has been accepted into the university]: What did the doctor say?
Karl [father]: Marianne, that’s enough.
Marianne: What did he say?
Michaela: He said it can happen again any time.
And he was right.
Teacher [to Michaela]: Do you believe in the role model function of pedagogy?
Michaela: I don’t know.
Teacher: What do you believe in?
Michaela: In God.
[the class laughs]
Teacher: And you all find that amusing? Well, what do you believe in?
[nothing from the students.]
Teacher: You see? And that is exactly the problem.
Or, here, am "I" the actual problem?
Hanna [to Michaela]: Where were you? You were there until the 11th grade, then you disappeared.
No, not really.
Michaela [to Hanna]: Know how many doctors I’ve had? And in the end they have no idea. Diagnosis by exclusion. They try something to see if it works. Then you get new pills. Always new ones. Then new side effects and pills against them too.
The medical industrial complex, let's call it.
Father Borchert: Some use God as a kind of insurance company for bad times. The harvest should be good and business booming.
Michaela: Yes, that’s how people are.
Father Borchert: I wonder whether God’s existence is proven by a good harvest? Or by someone being sick? There’s a difference between suffering, spiritual need and superstition.
New thread?
Michaela: Let me go! Christ, help me! I’m not allowed to pray anymore!
Sounds like the Devil to me, alright.
Michaela: Maybe God has abandoned me. He doesn’t give a shit.
Father Borchert: He died for us on the cross. No one is excluded from His sacrifice. Not you, either. But we live in times where evil is very strong…always trying to get the upper hand.
Michaela: So why me? Why with me? I go to university. I try to do right. And God sends me demons.
Father Borchert: Because you are special. Your sensitivity to this godless work is strong.
It really doesn't matter what you tell them, only that they believe it.
Michaela: Prayer doesn’t help. The demons come when I want to pray. Why won’t God let me be happy? Am I being punished?
Father Borchert: God doesn’t punish. He tests those He loves the most.
She’s not buying it. It must be the Devil himself that is inside her. Let’s do an exorcism. In time though, even Michaela figures that’s what it probably is: the Devil. Get him the hell out.
Michaela [to Stephan]: I can’t touch the cross anymore, see?
And he's just found out why.
Hanna: It’s all about your madness here. How much longer will you go on?
Michaela: Until they’re driven out.
Hanna: Stop it! “They” will never be driven out because there’s nothing there, only youself. It’s only you. If’s it’s you they’re driving out where will it end?
Michaela: There's a reason for it all. I’m suffering for the greater good, for a higher purpose. Like St. Catharine, you know?
Hanna: What kind of reason is that? Michaela, listen to yourself, that’s not you!
Michaela: You can’t choose what God has in store for you. I must follow my path.
Right to the grave.
Title card: Following a series of several dozen exorcisms Michaela Klinger dies of exhaustion in her parents’ house.
Next!
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Jordan B. Peterson
Intolerance of others’ views (no matter how ignorant or incoherent they may be) is not simply wrong; in a world where there is no right or wrong, it is worse: it is a sign you are embarrassingly unsophisticated or, possibly, dangerous.
With obvious exceptions here, let's say.
Don’t underestimate the power of vision and direction. These are irresistible forces, able to transform what might appear to be unconquerable obstacles into traversable pathways and expanding opportunities. Strengthen the individual. Start with yourself. Take care with yourself. Define who you are. Refine your personality. Choose your destination and articulate your Being. As the great nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche so brilliantly noted, “He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.
Sure, go ahead, pick one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy
Women select men. That makes them nature, because nature is what selects. And you can say "Well it's only symbolic that women are nature", it's like no, it's not just symbolic. The woman is the gatekeeper to reproductive success. And you can't get more like nature than that, in fact it's the very definition of nature.
New thread? Or, perhaps, a new forum?
In order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive.
See, I told you.
Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
Actually, for some here, it's the other way around.
I dreamed I saw my maternal grandmother sitting by the bank of a swimming pool, that was also a river. In real life, she had been a victim of Alzheimer’s disease, and had regressed, before her death, to a semi-conscious state. In the dream, as well, she had lost her capacity for self-control. Her genital region was exposed, dimly; it had the appearance of a thick mat of hair. She was stroking herself, absent-mindedly. She walked over to me, with a handful of pubic hair, compacted into something resembling a large artist’s paint-brush. She pushed this at my face. I raised my arm, several times, to deflect her hand; finally, unwilling to hurt her, or interfere with her any farther, I let her have her way. She stroked my face with the brush, gently, and said, like a child, “isn’t it soft?” I looked at her ruined face and said, “yes, Grandma, it’s soft.”
That ever happen to you?
Intolerance of others’ views (no matter how ignorant or incoherent they may be) is not simply wrong; in a world where there is no right or wrong, it is worse: it is a sign you are embarrassingly unsophisticated or, possibly, dangerous.
With obvious exceptions here, let's say.
Don’t underestimate the power of vision and direction. These are irresistible forces, able to transform what might appear to be unconquerable obstacles into traversable pathways and expanding opportunities. Strengthen the individual. Start with yourself. Take care with yourself. Define who you are. Refine your personality. Choose your destination and articulate your Being. As the great nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche so brilliantly noted, “He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.
Sure, go ahead, pick one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy
Women select men. That makes them nature, because nature is what selects. And you can say "Well it's only symbolic that women are nature", it's like no, it's not just symbolic. The woman is the gatekeeper to reproductive success. And you can't get more like nature than that, in fact it's the very definition of nature.
New thread? Or, perhaps, a new forum?
In order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive.
See, I told you.
Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
Actually, for some here, it's the other way around.
I dreamed I saw my maternal grandmother sitting by the bank of a swimming pool, that was also a river. In real life, she had been a victim of Alzheimer’s disease, and had regressed, before her death, to a semi-conscious state. In the dream, as well, she had lost her capacity for self-control. Her genital region was exposed, dimly; it had the appearance of a thick mat of hair. She was stroking herself, absent-mindedly. She walked over to me, with a handful of pubic hair, compacted into something resembling a large artist’s paint-brush. She pushed this at my face. I raised my arm, several times, to deflect her hand; finally, unwilling to hurt her, or interfere with her any farther, I let her have her way. She stroked my face with the brush, gently, and said, like a child, “isn’t it soft?” I looked at her ruined face and said, “yes, Grandma, it’s soft.”
That ever happen to you?
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
One can imagine a world where “the terrorist threat” was actually a very real one. In other words, a world where hundreds of fanatics like this were actually out there blowing themselves [and everyone around them] to bits. Day in and day out a new incident.
Try to wrap your head around it. Not planes flying into buildings but individual men and women – in city after city after city after city – picking a very public target and detonating bombs there. From then on would anyone dare to attend concerts or sporting events or crowd around at busy intersections? No one could ever really feel safe. In terms of the economy alone, it would have an enormous impact.
But it doesn’t happen. Or it has not yet. Weeks, months, even years can go by without a front page headline. Instead, it is more likely to be some local “nut” with a zillion guns acting out whatever it is that drives him to “crack”.
So, for me, this film is effective only by way of allowing us to speculate on how things could be if the “terrorists” ever did manage to embody an actual effective movement. Either here [in America] or elsewhere.
Here the target is Times Square. The terrorist is a cypher. We learn very little regarding why she chose to do this. She is apparently a True Believer. But that’s all it really takes. There is virtually no dialogue at all. As for those who send her on her way, one is oriental, one is black, two are white. The significance of that? You got me. Maybe to deflect away from the idea they must be Islamic terrorists.
Still, as with most of them [out in the real world], it does not exactly go according to plan. If there is one thing these guys almost always share in common it’s their ineptitude. I guess we can thank God for that.
There is one particularly surreal scene where she needs quarters to make a phone call. Why? Because the bomb wouldn’t detonate. People give her their quarters [glad to help her out] and she thanks them. But these same folks might have been standing beside her at the intersection if the bomb had detonated as planned. Blown to bits. Complete strangers. She just rationalizes it.
Day Night Day Night
She: If I think I’ve been noticed or there’s a small chance I may be caught, I must execute the plan immediately, even if there is no one nearby.
Commander: Again.
She: If I think I’ve been noticed or there’s a small chance I may be caught, I must execute the plan immediately, even if there is no one nearby.
Commander: Again:
She: If I think I’ve been noticed or there’s a small chance I may be caught, I must execute the plan immediately, even if there is no one nearby.
Commander: One more time.
She: If I think I’ve been noticed or there’s a small chance I may be caught, I must execute the plan immediately, even if there is no one nearby.
And that makes sense...how?
She: I’m sorry, I want to do everything right, but why would I do it if no one is around?
[they confer but no one answers her]
See?
She [whispering aloud to herself]: How can I know my motives are pure? You’ll see through me. What if you see things I don’t see? Has to be for you, not for them. Not for him. They’ll think it’s for him. But you’ll see. You’ll know. Don’t think I’m doing it for the wrong reason. I don’t think I am, but what can I know? How can I be sure? You’ll see right through me. You’ll see right through me.
Not your typical terrorist, he suspected.
Commander [pricks her finger with a pin]: Did that hurt?
She: No.
Commander: No, it didn’t. That’s all you’re gonna feel. It’s like a bug bite. A mosquito bite.
All what’s like? This: detonating a bomb and blowing yourself to bits.
Bombmaker: The bomb in the backpack weighs about 30 pounds. But most of the weight is in the nails.
Good to know?
The flirt [after she throws the backpack to the ground trying to detonate the explosives]: Man, that thing is heavy. Whatcha you got in it.
She: A bomb.
Would you believe her?
She [whispering aloud to herself]: Why don’t you want me?
[long pause]
She: Please give me a sign.
I guess we'll never know.
Try to wrap your head around it. Not planes flying into buildings but individual men and women – in city after city after city after city – picking a very public target and detonating bombs there. From then on would anyone dare to attend concerts or sporting events or crowd around at busy intersections? No one could ever really feel safe. In terms of the economy alone, it would have an enormous impact.
But it doesn’t happen. Or it has not yet. Weeks, months, even years can go by without a front page headline. Instead, it is more likely to be some local “nut” with a zillion guns acting out whatever it is that drives him to “crack”.
So, for me, this film is effective only by way of allowing us to speculate on how things could be if the “terrorists” ever did manage to embody an actual effective movement. Either here [in America] or elsewhere.
Here the target is Times Square. The terrorist is a cypher. We learn very little regarding why she chose to do this. She is apparently a True Believer. But that’s all it really takes. There is virtually no dialogue at all. As for those who send her on her way, one is oriental, one is black, two are white. The significance of that? You got me. Maybe to deflect away from the idea they must be Islamic terrorists.
Still, as with most of them [out in the real world], it does not exactly go according to plan. If there is one thing these guys almost always share in common it’s their ineptitude. I guess we can thank God for that.
There is one particularly surreal scene where she needs quarters to make a phone call. Why? Because the bomb wouldn’t detonate. People give her their quarters [glad to help her out] and she thanks them. But these same folks might have been standing beside her at the intersection if the bomb had detonated as planned. Blown to bits. Complete strangers. She just rationalizes it.
Day Night Day Night
She: If I think I’ve been noticed or there’s a small chance I may be caught, I must execute the plan immediately, even if there is no one nearby.
Commander: Again.
She: If I think I’ve been noticed or there’s a small chance I may be caught, I must execute the plan immediately, even if there is no one nearby.
Commander: Again:
She: If I think I’ve been noticed or there’s a small chance I may be caught, I must execute the plan immediately, even if there is no one nearby.
Commander: One more time.
She: If I think I’ve been noticed or there’s a small chance I may be caught, I must execute the plan immediately, even if there is no one nearby.
And that makes sense...how?
She: I’m sorry, I want to do everything right, but why would I do it if no one is around?
[they confer but no one answers her]
See?
She [whispering aloud to herself]: How can I know my motives are pure? You’ll see through me. What if you see things I don’t see? Has to be for you, not for them. Not for him. They’ll think it’s for him. But you’ll see. You’ll know. Don’t think I’m doing it for the wrong reason. I don’t think I am, but what can I know? How can I be sure? You’ll see right through me. You’ll see right through me.
Not your typical terrorist, he suspected.
Commander [pricks her finger with a pin]: Did that hurt?
She: No.
Commander: No, it didn’t. That’s all you’re gonna feel. It’s like a bug bite. A mosquito bite.
All what’s like? This: detonating a bomb and blowing yourself to bits.
Bombmaker: The bomb in the backpack weighs about 30 pounds. But most of the weight is in the nails.
Good to know?
The flirt [after she throws the backpack to the ground trying to detonate the explosives]: Man, that thing is heavy. Whatcha you got in it.
She: A bomb.
Would you believe her?
She [whispering aloud to herself]: Why don’t you want me?
[long pause]
She: Please give me a sign.
I guess we'll never know.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Never leave the great big highway just because you’re bored.
This is a horror film to be sure. Well, sort of. But the really good ones always seem to know how to make you laugh. You bust a gut but it doesn’t detract in the slightest from the terrible things that happen. It’s just that the folks it’s all happening to have a great sense of humor. Some right down to the bitter end. Not that you are ever meant to take any of it seriously.
And not just regarding the horrors being afflicted on them by “them”. Much more ghastly is the horror they inflict on each other.
People actually argue over what this film is really all about. What is it trying to tell us about life…about relationships…about family…about death and dying.
Nothing more than can be said is my own best guess. And that can be practically anything at all. Unless it was all just a dream. But then how do you explain Frank’s note.
This is no Baghead, true, but it will do until the next one comes along.
Dead End
Laura: Was there no dial tone?
Frank: No, Laura. I just forgot the number to 9-1-1!
That ever happen to you?
Brad: How does your baby breathe under all those blankets?
Lady in white: She’s dead.
Time to turn around?
Richard: What’s he doing?
Laura: He’s trying to get Brad’s phone.
Richard: With a stick?
I forget: was it?
Laura [who forgot to pack the 'local map"]: Next time I’ll just bring a globe in case you decide to drive to mothers by way of the North Pole.
You know, if that's even possible.
Richard: I know you both think I’m retarded and all but I have a theory and I want you to hear me out. Brad is dead. His body is mutilated and god knows how it got that way. We’re the only people out here and all the clocks stopped at 7:30. This reeks of alien activity!
Next up: what reeks here.
Frank: Talk about a Merry fucking Christmas.
Next up: a happy fucking New Year.
Laura: Anything else?
Frank: Yeah. You’re goddamn brother is a freak too. He jerks off to gun magazines!
Yo, henry!
Richard: Pregnant. Oh boy. I hope it’s a boy. “What’s up little critter, I’m you’re Uncle DICK!”
As in dickhead, let's say.
Laura: I wonder if we should we save some pie for Michael?
If she makes it out alive. And, in fact, she doesn't
Frank: They teach you what to do in this kind of a situation?
Marion: Not to panic.
Unless, of course, that's not even an option.
Frank: Why us, huh? Why? What did we ever do to you? All we wanted was a nice Christmas…is that too much to ask…a nice Christmas?!
Maybe next year.
Lady in white [to Marion]: He’s not here for you.
The hearse, in other words.
This is a horror film to be sure. Well, sort of. But the really good ones always seem to know how to make you laugh. You bust a gut but it doesn’t detract in the slightest from the terrible things that happen. It’s just that the folks it’s all happening to have a great sense of humor. Some right down to the bitter end. Not that you are ever meant to take any of it seriously.
And not just regarding the horrors being afflicted on them by “them”. Much more ghastly is the horror they inflict on each other.
People actually argue over what this film is really all about. What is it trying to tell us about life…about relationships…about family…about death and dying.
Nothing more than can be said is my own best guess. And that can be practically anything at all. Unless it was all just a dream. But then how do you explain Frank’s note.
This is no Baghead, true, but it will do until the next one comes along.
Dead End
Laura: Was there no dial tone?
Frank: No, Laura. I just forgot the number to 9-1-1!
That ever happen to you?
Brad: How does your baby breathe under all those blankets?
Lady in white: She’s dead.
Time to turn around?
Richard: What’s he doing?
Laura: He’s trying to get Brad’s phone.
Richard: With a stick?
I forget: was it?
Laura [who forgot to pack the 'local map"]: Next time I’ll just bring a globe in case you decide to drive to mothers by way of the North Pole.
You know, if that's even possible.
Richard: I know you both think I’m retarded and all but I have a theory and I want you to hear me out. Brad is dead. His body is mutilated and god knows how it got that way. We’re the only people out here and all the clocks stopped at 7:30. This reeks of alien activity!
Next up: what reeks here.
Frank: Talk about a Merry fucking Christmas.
Next up: a happy fucking New Year.
Laura: Anything else?
Frank: Yeah. You’re goddamn brother is a freak too. He jerks off to gun magazines!
Yo, henry!
Richard: Pregnant. Oh boy. I hope it’s a boy. “What’s up little critter, I’m you’re Uncle DICK!”
As in dickhead, let's say.
Laura: I wonder if we should we save some pie for Michael?
If she makes it out alive. And, in fact, she doesn't
Frank: They teach you what to do in this kind of a situation?
Marion: Not to panic.
Unless, of course, that's not even an option.
Frank: Why us, huh? Why? What did we ever do to you? All we wanted was a nice Christmas…is that too much to ask…a nice Christmas?!
Maybe next year.
Lady in white [to Marion]: He’s not here for you.
The hearse, in other words.
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
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Re: Quote of the day
Yuval Noah Harari
Suffering arises from craving; the only way to be fully liberated from suffering is to be fully liberated from craving; and the only way to be liberated from craving is to train the mind to experience reality as it is.”
Fractured and fragmented, it is then.
Whatever is possible is by definition also natural.
I think it's important to note this from time to time.
The first principle of monotheist religions is ‘God exists. What does He want from me?’ The first principle of Buddhism is ‘Suffering exists. How do I escape it?'
To click or not to click, that is the question.
For the first time in history, more people die today from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals combined.
Good to know?
Does happiness really depend on self-delusion?
Define really?
Thousands of years before our liberal age, ancient Buddhism went further by denying not just all cosmic dramas, but even the inner drama of human creation. The universe has no meaning, and human feelings too are not part of a great cosmic tale. They are ephemeral vibrations, appearing and disappearing for no particular purpose. That’s the truth. Get over it.
Not counting nirvana though, right?
Suffering arises from craving; the only way to be fully liberated from suffering is to be fully liberated from craving; and the only way to be liberated from craving is to train the mind to experience reality as it is.”
Fractured and fragmented, it is then.
Whatever is possible is by definition also natural.
I think it's important to note this from time to time.
The first principle of monotheist religions is ‘God exists. What does He want from me?’ The first principle of Buddhism is ‘Suffering exists. How do I escape it?'
To click or not to click, that is the question.
For the first time in history, more people die today from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals combined.
Good to know?
Does happiness really depend on self-delusion?
Define really?
Thousands of years before our liberal age, ancient Buddhism went further by denying not just all cosmic dramas, but even the inner drama of human creation. The universe has no meaning, and human feelings too are not part of a great cosmic tale. They are ephemeral vibrations, appearing and disappearing for no particular purpose. That’s the truth. Get over it.
Not counting nirvana though, right?