Since being a Mr. Somebody is dependant in large part on [among other things] dasein, he really could be seen as Mr. Anybody. And since any one particular Mr. Somebody is merely an existential fabrication, he may just as well be [in the end] Mr. Nobody. Which, after we are dead and gone, we all end up being anything.I know: Whatever the hell that might possibly mean.
As you might imagine, I liked this film. On the other hand [though precisely for the same reasons], I am sure that many will not like it. Lots of folks simply don’t want to go too deep in probing these relationships. Instead, they prefer for them to be more, say, objective. Simpler.
If you like your reality linear, this might not be the film for you. So much seems to depend on where exactly you are at any one particular time. And who exactly that you think you are simply because this happened instead of that.
In other words, back again to this: Why, oh, why can’t everyone come to agree on what the right answers are to all of the questions that pop into our heads? But even in the year 2092 they still can’t so that.
It’s something [sort of] along the lines of Donnie Darko. Or The Tree of Life. Or The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Bottom line: Somewhere in the midst of all this chaos and uncertainty, you have to squeeze in as much love as you possibly can. But don’t forget: if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you are with.
So, what does it really mean?
Nobody knows, right? But here is one take on it: https://cervifrank.wordpress.com/2013/1 ... knowledge/
Look for the now legendary “butterfly effect” to set in motion a particular set of dominoes. If only a bit more surreal. Here, for example, it accounts for Nemo’s very existence. You’ll come to that part: the fucking leaf!
But, let’s face it: how everything eventually gets intertwined is still very, very, very mysterious.
Free movement across time is a recurring theme of the film. The central character’s name is Nemo, which when spelled backwards is ‘omen’, a foretelling of the future. Further, his main love interest is Anna and his daughter is Eve, both of which are the same when read in reverse.
Nemo is Latin for “nobody”. It was the name that Odysseus gave the Cyclops.
While on a break from filming the Neanderthal scenes, Sarah Polley received a call from a friend, who informed her that a Toronto Star reporter had discovered that her biological father was not Michael Polley, but Montreal film producer Harry Gulkin, whom her mother had an affair with in 1978 while performing in a play at the Centaur Theater in Montreal. Sarah, who had already discovered the truth herself, contacted the reporter and ran outside to a park bench in full make up and began crying as she convinced the reporter to sit on the story as she had not yet told Michael and wasn’t sure that she wanted to. The reporter agreed and afterwards, Sarah decided to create a documentary film about her mother and the events that led to her conception and her family learning the truth - Stories We Tell (2012). IMDb
And this is actually pertinent to the film’s own narrative.
Mr. Nobody
Nemo Nobody [voiceover]: Like most living creatures, the pigeon quickly associates the pressing of the level with the reward. But when a timer releases a seed automatically every 20 seconds, the pigeon wonders, what did I do to deserve this? If it was flapping its wings at the time, it will continue to flap, convinced that its actions have the decisive influence on what happens. We call this “pigeon superstition”.
[cut to Nemo on a hospital gurney]
Nemo Nobody: What did I do to deserve this?
Like that ultimatly has anytghing to do with it.
Nemo [aged 118 to Dr. Feldheim]: Sometimes people call me Mr. Craft. C-R-A-F-T. Can’t Remember A Fucking Thing.
We should all be so lucky?
TV Host: This is Julian Marshall. Live from the New New York hospital, where we’re going to see the final episode in our series, “The Last Mortals” Mr. Nobody is 118 years old and he has not been telemorized! Nor does he have one of these marvelous stem-cell compatible pigs!! Live on WWB, Mr. Nobody will be the last man on Earth to die of old-age!!!
What, you thought it would be you?
TV host: Now doctor, no trace of his identity has been found in the national records, nothing about his past!
Dr. Feldheim: We don’t know who Mr. Nobody is. Neither does he. Our patient’s memories are confused. But it is not unusual at a certain stage of illness for very old memories to emerge in great detail.
No, this is actually a real thing.
Nemo age 8: I can remember a long time ago. Long before my birth. I was waiting with those who were not yet born. When we’re not born yet, we know everything. Everything that will happen. When it’s your turn, the Angels of Oblivion place a finger on your mouth. “Shh…” It leaves a mark on the upper lip. It means that you have forgotten everything. But the angels missed me.
Well, it might be true.
Nemo [age 8 voiceover]: Why am I me and not somebody else?
I was already well into my teens when that finally occurred to me.
Young journalist: Do you remember what the world was like before quasi-immortality?
Nemo [aged 118]: What?
Young journalist: Telemorization. Endless renewal of cells. What was it like when humans were mortal?
New thread?
Nemo [aged 31]: What was there before the Big Bang? Well, you see, there was no before because before the Big Bang, time did not exist. Time is a result of the expansion of the Universe itself, but what will happen when the Universe has finished expanding… and the movement is reversed? What will be the nature of time? If String Theory is correct, the universe possesses nine spatial dimensions, and one temporal dimension. Now we can imagine that in the beginning, all the dimensions were twisted together and during the Big Bang, three spatial dimensions, the ones that we know as height, width and depth, and one temporal dimension, what we know as time, were deployed. The other six remained miniscule, wound up together. Now, if we live in a Universe of wound dimensions, how do we distinguish between…illusion and reality? Time, as we know it, is a dimension we experience only in one direction. But what if one of the additional dimensions wasn’t spatial, but temporal?
See, I told you. Now, explain it to me.
Nemo [aged 8]: If you mix the mashed potatoes and sauce, you can’t separate them later. It’s forever. The smoke comes out of Daddy’s cigarette, but it never goes back in. We cannot go back. That’s why it’s hard to choose. You have to make the right choice. As long as you don’t choose, everything remains possible.
Well, you know, in theory. And [always] only those things that you are actually able to do.
Nemo [age 8 voiceover]: Daddy says you can predict exactly where Mars will be in the sky, even in a hundred years. But the funny thing is that daddy doesn’t know what will happen to him ten minutes from now.
Spooky enough for you?
Nemo [aged 31 voiceover]: To what extent are our fears innate? When we hatch goose eggs in an incubator, and then, above the baby birds pass a form simulating a goose in flight the birds stretch their necks and call out. But if we invert the direction of the silhouette, it conjures the shape of a falcon. The response of the baby birds is immediate. They will crouch with fear, though they’ve never before seen a falcon. Without any instruction, an innate fear helps them to survive. But in humans…to what ancient dangers might our innate fears correspond?
Spooky enough for you?
TV host: Should Mr. Nobody be allowed to die a natural death? Should his existence be artificially prolonged? Make your vote now! Press X for artificial prolongation, press 0 to let nature run its course. We’ll be right back, after this!
He wondered why that sounded so familiar.
Jean: Nemo, do I matter to you? I’d just like to ask you one question. Did you do it on purpose? I found this on the bedside table.
[reads note]
Jean: “There comes a time in life where everything seems narrow. Choices have been made. I can only continue on. I know myself like the back of my hand. I can predict my every reaction. My life has been cast in cement with airbags and seatbelts. I’ve done everything to reach this point and now that I’m here, I’m fucking bored. The hardest thing is knowing whether I’m still alive.”
Nemo aged 31 [looking at the note]: It is my handwriting. I don’t remember.
Cut him some slack?
Nemo’s Mother [about her son to Harry]: He has a gift for making people uncomfortable.
I taught him that.
Nemo [age 16 to Harry]: It will happen on a Saturday. You will be behind the wheel of your car, you are whistling. You do not see the crossroads. All of a sudden, a train will hit you from your left and you will be crushed.
Nemo’s Mother: You’re not funny!
Nemo’s Mother [turning to Harry]: Nemo thinks he can predict the future.
Nemo: I can. I predicted dad’s accident.
Nemo’s Mother: Yeah, I always wonded if you’re not the one who took off the handbrake. No one can predict the future, no one knows what’s going to happen.
Nemo: I do.
Nemo’s Mother [slapping his face]: Well if you could, you’d know you were going to get that.
Nemo: I knew you’d say that.
Next up: all the things you think you know about me.
Anna [age 15]: Come swim with us, they’re my friends. Come on.
Nemo [age 16]: They’re idiots. I don’t go swimming with idiots.
Anna: Jerk.
[Anna leaves]
Nemo: [voiceover]: What on earth made me say I don’t go swimming with idiots?!
Maybe it’s because he was too embarrassed to admit that he doesn’t know why. Another crucial juncture now long gone.
Nemo [aged 31 voiceover]: After 90 days, the onboard computer is still maintaining the passengers’ metabolism at the level of a hibernating frog. He’d always been fascinated by the fact that certain frogs can spend the winter completely frozen. And that when spring come, they defrost and begin living again.
Nature? Go figure.
Nemo [age 31 voiceover]: Probably the worst thing about being on Mars is that nothing will happen there. Time will seem stale and empty.
Man [looking out over barren Mars landscape]: It doesn’t look like there is much to do. I hope I brought enough Sudoku.
He means crostics of course.
Nemo [aged 16 voiceover]: What happens when we fall in love? As a result of certain stimuli, the hypothalamus releases a powerful discharges of endorphins…but why exactly that woman or that man? Is there a release of odourless pheromones that correspond to our complimentary genetic signal? Or is it physical feutures that we recognize? A mother’s eyes…A smell that stimulates a happy memory. Is love part of a plan? A vast war plan between two modes of reproduction. Bacteria and viruses are asexual organisms. With each cell division, each multiplication, they mutate and perfect themselves much more quickly than we do. Against this, we respond with the most fiercing weapon: Sex. Two individuals, by mixing their genes, shuffle the cards and create an individual who resists viruses better. The more dissimilar he or she is. Now, are we just unknowing participants in a war between two modes of reproduction?
See, I told you.
Nemo [aged 118 to the young reporter]: You want to know why I lost Anna? Because two months earlier an unemployed Brazilian boiled an egg. The heat created a micro-climate in the room…a slight difference of temperature and then, two months later heavy rain on the other side of the world. That Brazilian boiled an egg instead of being at work. He had lost his job in a clothing factory because six months earlier I would have compared the prices of jeans and I will have bought the cheaper pair. Jeans production will have moved to other countries. And I lost every trace of Anna.
All of this to explain that single drop of rain that made Anna’s telephone number impossible to read.
Nemo [aged 31 to or about Elise]: I often have this dream. In prehistoric times, I can hear you screaming. I chase the bear and you’re not afraid anymore, but when I wake up, there’s no bear… but you’re still afraid. And I’m not a bear hunter. I’m an executive at a plant that manufactures photocopying machines that just quit his job. I don’t dare to move, I don’t live, whatever I do is a disaster. I would so love to able to chase the bear away and for you to not be afraid anymore.
Any bear hunters here?
Nemo [aged] 31: Jean, I’m off to buy a fishing rod.
Why: He had just seen a commercial on TV advertising one. He had carved YES on one side of a coin and NO on the other side. He flipped it. It came up YES.Next up: standing on a track with a train approaching. He flipped the coin. It came up NO.
Elise: I was dreaming about Stefano. He doesn’t give a damn about me.
Nemo [age 31]: Stefano?
Elise: I love him. I can’t see any other explanation for being in this state. That’s the only thing it can be. I love him. I know I'm crazy. Every morning when I wake up, I open my eyes and I see your face and I start crying. I realize that with you, my life is passing me by.
[she turns and starts thumping Nemo on the chest]
Elise: How can you stay so calm? How can you bear that? You’re not human. I don’t know what to do.
All I can think is: thank God this sort of thing never happened to me. You first have to be able to experience love like this, right?
Nemo [aged 118 to Doctor Feldheim]: Elise left me. You know what they say. Everything works out in the end…even if badly.
No getting around that.
Nemo [aged 31]: Why does cigarette smoke never go back into the cigarette? Why do molecules spread away from each other? Why does a spilled drop of ink never reform? Because the Universe moves towards a state of dissipation. That is the principle of entropy… The tendency of the Universe to evolve toward a state of increasing disorder. The principle of entropy is related to the arrow of time…A result of the expansion of the Universe. But what will happen when gravitational forces counter-balance the forces of expansion? Or if the energy of the quantum void proves too weak? At that moment, the universe might enter its phase of contraction. The Big Crunch. So what will become of time? Will it reverse? No one knows the answer.
Let's run this by those here who always know the answers. Well, okay, if only in regard to everything under the sun.
Young journalist: They have announced the results of the voting. I’m sorry.
Nemo [aged 118]: At my age the candles cost more than a cake. I’m not afraid of dying. I’m afraid I haven’t lived enough! It should be written on every schoolroom blackboard: “Life is a playground. Or nothing.”
New thread?
Nemo [aged 118 to Nemo aged 31…surreally from a dvd]: I start at the end of the story and go toward the beginning.
Nemo [aged 31]: I don’t understand.
Nemo 118: In this life here, you don’t exist. I don’t know why…Only the Architect knows.
Nemo 31: The Architect?
Nemo 118: The child…The one running after the train. Maybe your parents never met. Maybe your father died aged 5 in a sledging accident. Maybe you were one of the vast majority of those whose genetic code did not reach its final destination. Maybe when she died a prehistoric woman killed off the line of humans to which you belong. So for this world…you don’t exist.
The Benjamin Button Syndrome meets the Buttterfly Effect. The rest then being history. Well, so far anyway.
Young journalist: Everything you say is contradictory. You can’t have been in one place and another at the same time. Of all those lives, which one is the right one?
Nemo aged 118: Each of these lives is the right one! Every path is the right path. “Everything could have been anything else and it would have just as much meaning.” Tennessee Williams. But you’re too young for that.
Young journalist: You can’t be dead and still be here. You can’t not exist.
Then things really get…metaphysical?
Nemo [aged 118 to the young journalist]: Come see. It’s the sea.
[the buildings outside the window begin to break apart and vanish…revealing the ocean]
Nemo: The child is taking it apart. He doesn’t need it anymore. Before he was unable to make a choice because he didn’t know what would happen. Now that he knows what will happen, he is unable to make a choice.
Then back to the leaf. To contingency, chance and change.
Nemo [aged 118 to the camera]: Thank you, thank you. Thank you. This is the most beautiful day of my life. Anna…Anna…
Then everything goes in reverse. Back to the Big Crunch so that yet another Big Bang can start it up all over again.
Where will I be then, he wondered.
Quote of the day
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Here there’s the part about women with men and the part about women with women. And it doesn’t take long to discover it goes far beyond the bedroom. Basically, however, we still live in a culture [more than 40 years after this film came out] in which gender roles are very much in evidence from the moment we come out of the womb.
But at least back then [the early eighties] the women’s movement was not yet seen as just a “historical event” from “the 60s”. It was still fairly fresh in the minds of many. Though fading fast. Today a lot of women just take for granted opportunities afforded them by those women who took to the streets and demanded [fought for] the opportunities in actual political struggles.
The husband here is a teacher. Film. And he subscribes to all of the usual left-liberal political agendas. But he is not nearly as progressive in regards to his own wife. He just assumes, for example, that her time should be focused more on what is important to him rather than to her. Also, he cheats on her. Over and again. The usual in other words. A real “scumbag” as some might call it.
Again, this was 40 years ago. Twelve or so years after the Stonewall riots…but nowhere near where we are today in terms of open minds and toleration. And she is still the “stay at home housewife”. So, the economic clout is all on his side. And her lover is absolutely petrified that the town will find out and she will lose her job. Meanwhile, many young gays today who take their own far more expanded options for granted simply have no idea of what it was like for those who first kicked down the barriers.
Of course, gay or straight, it’s the kids that often bear the brunt of it. And, gay or straight, folks are still human-all-to-human.
Linda Griffiths, the woman who plays Lianna in this film died on September 21, 2014. She was only 56 years old. Lianna was her first feature film.
In some shots, she looks so much like Madeleine Stowe to me.
John Sayles had written the screenplay for this film before writing the screenplay for his debut film, Return of the Secaucus Seven (1979). Sayles failed to get funding for a film about a lesbian love affair in the 1970s, and those who felt comfortable with the material were not comfortable with the film being directed by a man. So, Sayles put the Lianna (1983) screenplay on hold until gaining success with his two first films, Return of the Secaucus Seven (1979) and Baby It’s You (1983).
The money for the film was raised by producers Maggie Renzi and Jeffrey Nelson. The film’s investors included about thirty “nontraditional” investors, people who had never put money into a film before.
John Sayles based the characters on couples he knew who were undergoing custody battles and women who were coming out as lesbians.
According to John Sayles’ official web-site, the picture is “the original lesbian date movie”.
Lianna
Lianna [to Sandy about Ruth]: I’m 33 years old. I don’t have crushes.
What exactly is a crush?
Ruth: You read a lot?
Lianna: I started out as an English major.
Ruth: Started out? What did you end up as?
Lianna: A wife.
Hint, hint.
Lianna [after seeing him fornicating with one of his students earlier in the day]: How was the party?
Dick: Okay I guess. The usual. A lot of students like always at the Loomises’, trying to score their brownie points.
Lianna: Um hmm.
[pause]
Lianna: How many do you get for a fuck in the sandbox?
Dick: Huh?
Lianna: Brownie points. How many do you get for a fuck in the sandbox?
Next up: brownie points here.
Dick: We need time to think, Lianna.
Lianna: We had time to think the last this happened. Remember?
Dick: Look, if I were going to leave you, I wpouldn’t start by going to Toronto. So don’t worry, okay?
Lianna: No. I won’t.
This is really how many men seem to think. So it does shock some of them when, instead, she leaves. And not for another man, either.
Lianna [at the pool]: I want to kiss you.
Ruth: Can’t here. That’s part of the package.
You know the one.
Lianna: I had an affair.
Dick: Oh. Congratulations. Anyone I know?
Lianna: Not really.
Dick: Good. Jerry Carlson was acting kind of strange tonight. I’d hate to think that he had anything on me. An affair, huh? Feel like you’ve gotten even?
Lianna: That’s not why it happened?
Dick: Was it worth it? Was it the man of your dreams?
Lianna: It wasn’t a man.
Dick [taken aback]: Huh?
Tell me about it.
Dick: Professor Breenon, eh? So you’re still fucking your teachers.
Lianna: And you’re still fucking your students.
Dick: At least they’re the right sex.
Forty years later...?
Lianna: It never occurred to you that I might fall in love with somebody.
Dick: With somebody else.
Lianna: With somebody.
Ouch.[
Dick: Next time I’ll hit back, Lianna, I’ll hit back. No matter how much you think you can hurt me, I can hurt you more.
We'll see about that.
Lianna: Ruth, I told him.
Ruth: Oh, my God.
Lianna: I’m moving out. I told him, we had a fight and he kicked me out.
Ruth: Where are you gonna stay?
Lianna: Well, I thought I would stay with you. At least for a while anyway.
Ruth: Lianna, we can’t do that. This is worse than a small town here. I’ve got to work with these people.
Modern love meet postmodern love.
Spencer [the son]: So my old lady’s a dyke, big deal.
Let's just say that back then it was a bigger deal.
Lianna [about Jan]: Oh, I didn’t know you worked with her too.
Ruth: I didn’t think this was going to happen. I figured you being married and having kids…
Lianna: What? That I’d be easier to leave?
Ruth: I didn’t think that I…I thought I could keep it under control.
Lianna: I’m scared.
Ruth: So am I.
See, just like with straight people.
Bob [to Lianna]: I had a player once, a halfback. Hell of a runner. I found out in the middle of the season that he…You know. He liked guys. And I had no idea. I mean, he was a black kid. I didn’t even know they had them that way.
Does that surptise you?
Lianna [looking at herself in the mirror]: Lianna Massey eats pussy.
Yummy?
Sandy: One time she was having a rough period with Dick. And we had this long talk. And afterward, I walked all the way back to the student union building holding her hand.
Jerry: My God, Sandy, you think you can catch it?
Sandy [exasperated]: I’m serious. It seemed so nice and friendly at the time, but I think about it now and I wonder. I don’t think it’s fair to Spencer and Theda. I don’t even like to think of her and Ruth together.
Jerry: Well, I’m from California. That kind of thing doesn’t phase me.
Next up: I'm from Texas.
Ruth: You’re still afraid of the words aren’t you? You love women, Lianna, not just me.
And there it is. Just as with women with men and men with men: monogamy or the other way:
Ruth: You slept with somebody while I was gone, didn’t you?
Lianna [reluctantly]: Yes.
Ruth: Well. How was it?
Lianna [admitting it]: Nice. Exciting.
Ruth: We have some things to straighten out.
Lianna: Are you going back to her?
Ruth [truly uncertain]: I don’t know. I have to think. I’ve been through so much with her. Besides, you can be in love with more than one person at the same time.
Lianna: You are the only person I’ve ever been in love with.
I have never been in love, myself. Not that I can recall anyway.
Lianna: You got me into this.
Ruth: I got you into it? I warned you every step of the way.
Lianna: And the minute I told you I loved you, you started backing away. How could you do that?!
Ruth [sensing the futility of it all]: Lianna. you don’t understand. Sometimes straight women will have an affair with another woman just to see what it is like. How could I tell?
Lianna: I’m proud that I love you. Nobody could ever make me feel bad about that.
Ruth: Oh, Lianna, I’m so sorry.
Lianna [almost pleading]: Don’t leave me.
Really, just one more rendition of conflicting goods. It doesn’t always have to revolve around morality.
Dick: I want my career to go well. I want a family. I want to have a rich and rewarding sex life.
Lianna: What’s that, the Playboy philosophy?
Dick: No, it’s from your girlfriend Ruth’s book, The Potentials of Motherhood.
Oh...
Lianna [to Dick]: Just because you can argue better doesn’t mean that you’re right.
Tell us about it.
Sandy [struggling to explain her reaction to lesbian relationships]: I mean, I’m not interested in women. You know, for sex. And I don’t understand women who are. But I really love you, you know?
Lianna [with deep feeling]: I love you too.
Sandy [about Ruth]: She left you?
[Lianna nods]
Sandy: How are you?
Lianna: It’s so awful. I just feel…so awful.
Sandy [taking her in her asrms]: Oh, honey. Honey. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
No sequel, alas.
But at least back then [the early eighties] the women’s movement was not yet seen as just a “historical event” from “the 60s”. It was still fairly fresh in the minds of many. Though fading fast. Today a lot of women just take for granted opportunities afforded them by those women who took to the streets and demanded [fought for] the opportunities in actual political struggles.
The husband here is a teacher. Film. And he subscribes to all of the usual left-liberal political agendas. But he is not nearly as progressive in regards to his own wife. He just assumes, for example, that her time should be focused more on what is important to him rather than to her. Also, he cheats on her. Over and again. The usual in other words. A real “scumbag” as some might call it.
Again, this was 40 years ago. Twelve or so years after the Stonewall riots…but nowhere near where we are today in terms of open minds and toleration. And she is still the “stay at home housewife”. So, the economic clout is all on his side. And her lover is absolutely petrified that the town will find out and she will lose her job. Meanwhile, many young gays today who take their own far more expanded options for granted simply have no idea of what it was like for those who first kicked down the barriers.
Of course, gay or straight, it’s the kids that often bear the brunt of it. And, gay or straight, folks are still human-all-to-human.
Linda Griffiths, the woman who plays Lianna in this film died on September 21, 2014. She was only 56 years old. Lianna was her first feature film.
In some shots, she looks so much like Madeleine Stowe to me.
John Sayles had written the screenplay for this film before writing the screenplay for his debut film, Return of the Secaucus Seven (1979). Sayles failed to get funding for a film about a lesbian love affair in the 1970s, and those who felt comfortable with the material were not comfortable with the film being directed by a man. So, Sayles put the Lianna (1983) screenplay on hold until gaining success with his two first films, Return of the Secaucus Seven (1979) and Baby It’s You (1983).
The money for the film was raised by producers Maggie Renzi and Jeffrey Nelson. The film’s investors included about thirty “nontraditional” investors, people who had never put money into a film before.
John Sayles based the characters on couples he knew who were undergoing custody battles and women who were coming out as lesbians.
According to John Sayles’ official web-site, the picture is “the original lesbian date movie”.
Lianna
Lianna [to Sandy about Ruth]: I’m 33 years old. I don’t have crushes.
What exactly is a crush?
Ruth: You read a lot?
Lianna: I started out as an English major.
Ruth: Started out? What did you end up as?
Lianna: A wife.
Hint, hint.
Lianna [after seeing him fornicating with one of his students earlier in the day]: How was the party?
Dick: Okay I guess. The usual. A lot of students like always at the Loomises’, trying to score their brownie points.
Lianna: Um hmm.
[pause]
Lianna: How many do you get for a fuck in the sandbox?
Dick: Huh?
Lianna: Brownie points. How many do you get for a fuck in the sandbox?
Next up: brownie points here.
Dick: We need time to think, Lianna.
Lianna: We had time to think the last this happened. Remember?
Dick: Look, if I were going to leave you, I wpouldn’t start by going to Toronto. So don’t worry, okay?
Lianna: No. I won’t.
This is really how many men seem to think. So it does shock some of them when, instead, she leaves. And not for another man, either.
Lianna [at the pool]: I want to kiss you.
Ruth: Can’t here. That’s part of the package.
You know the one.
Lianna: I had an affair.
Dick: Oh. Congratulations. Anyone I know?
Lianna: Not really.
Dick: Good. Jerry Carlson was acting kind of strange tonight. I’d hate to think that he had anything on me. An affair, huh? Feel like you’ve gotten even?
Lianna: That’s not why it happened?
Dick: Was it worth it? Was it the man of your dreams?
Lianna: It wasn’t a man.
Dick [taken aback]: Huh?
Tell me about it.
Dick: Professor Breenon, eh? So you’re still fucking your teachers.
Lianna: And you’re still fucking your students.
Dick: At least they’re the right sex.
Forty years later...?
Lianna: It never occurred to you that I might fall in love with somebody.
Dick: With somebody else.
Lianna: With somebody.
Ouch.[
Dick: Next time I’ll hit back, Lianna, I’ll hit back. No matter how much you think you can hurt me, I can hurt you more.
We'll see about that.
Lianna: Ruth, I told him.
Ruth: Oh, my God.
Lianna: I’m moving out. I told him, we had a fight and he kicked me out.
Ruth: Where are you gonna stay?
Lianna: Well, I thought I would stay with you. At least for a while anyway.
Ruth: Lianna, we can’t do that. This is worse than a small town here. I’ve got to work with these people.
Modern love meet postmodern love.
Spencer [the son]: So my old lady’s a dyke, big deal.
Let's just say that back then it was a bigger deal.
Lianna [about Jan]: Oh, I didn’t know you worked with her too.
Ruth: I didn’t think this was going to happen. I figured you being married and having kids…
Lianna: What? That I’d be easier to leave?
Ruth: I didn’t think that I…I thought I could keep it under control.
Lianna: I’m scared.
Ruth: So am I.
See, just like with straight people.
Bob [to Lianna]: I had a player once, a halfback. Hell of a runner. I found out in the middle of the season that he…You know. He liked guys. And I had no idea. I mean, he was a black kid. I didn’t even know they had them that way.
Does that surptise you?
Lianna [looking at herself in the mirror]: Lianna Massey eats pussy.
Yummy?
Sandy: One time she was having a rough period with Dick. And we had this long talk. And afterward, I walked all the way back to the student union building holding her hand.
Jerry: My God, Sandy, you think you can catch it?
Sandy [exasperated]: I’m serious. It seemed so nice and friendly at the time, but I think about it now and I wonder. I don’t think it’s fair to Spencer and Theda. I don’t even like to think of her and Ruth together.
Jerry: Well, I’m from California. That kind of thing doesn’t phase me.
Next up: I'm from Texas.
Ruth: You’re still afraid of the words aren’t you? You love women, Lianna, not just me.
And there it is. Just as with women with men and men with men: monogamy or the other way:
Ruth: You slept with somebody while I was gone, didn’t you?
Lianna [reluctantly]: Yes.
Ruth: Well. How was it?
Lianna [admitting it]: Nice. Exciting.
Ruth: We have some things to straighten out.
Lianna: Are you going back to her?
Ruth [truly uncertain]: I don’t know. I have to think. I’ve been through so much with her. Besides, you can be in love with more than one person at the same time.
Lianna: You are the only person I’ve ever been in love with.
I have never been in love, myself. Not that I can recall anyway.
Lianna: You got me into this.
Ruth: I got you into it? I warned you every step of the way.
Lianna: And the minute I told you I loved you, you started backing away. How could you do that?!
Ruth [sensing the futility of it all]: Lianna. you don’t understand. Sometimes straight women will have an affair with another woman just to see what it is like. How could I tell?
Lianna: I’m proud that I love you. Nobody could ever make me feel bad about that.
Ruth: Oh, Lianna, I’m so sorry.
Lianna [almost pleading]: Don’t leave me.
Really, just one more rendition of conflicting goods. It doesn’t always have to revolve around morality.
Dick: I want my career to go well. I want a family. I want to have a rich and rewarding sex life.
Lianna: What’s that, the Playboy philosophy?
Dick: No, it’s from your girlfriend Ruth’s book, The Potentials of Motherhood.
Oh...
Lianna [to Dick]: Just because you can argue better doesn’t mean that you’re right.
Tell us about it.
Sandy [struggling to explain her reaction to lesbian relationships]: I mean, I’m not interested in women. You know, for sex. And I don’t understand women who are. But I really love you, you know?
Lianna [with deep feeling]: I love you too.
Sandy [about Ruth]: She left you?
[Lianna nods]
Sandy: How are you?
Lianna: It’s so awful. I just feel…so awful.
Sandy [taking her in her asrms]: Oh, honey. Honey. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
No sequel, alas.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Determinism
“In fact, if you are faced with the prospect of running across an open field in which lightning bolts are going to be a problem, you are much better off if their timing and location are determined by something, since then they may be predictable by you, and hence avoidable. Determinism is the friend, not the foe, of those who dislike inevitability.” Daniel C. Dennett
Of course, your determinism might be entirely different.
"Newton, Darwin and Freud introduced determinism into everything they studied: the first into the universe, the second into the living world, and the third into the psyche. All three types of determinism were to be questioned later, and in the same sequence. It all started with Einstein's denial of Newton's universe.” Alija Izetbegović
The Gall!
“Life is a long agonized illness only curable by death.” Spike Milligan
For some more than others, I suspect.
“We are all slaves, wire-pulled marionettes: You, Ernest, I. There is no freedom on the face of the earth nor above. The tiger that tears a lamb is not free, I am not free, you are not free. All that happens must happen; no word that is said is said in vain, in vain is raised no hand.” Sylvester Viereck George
Unless, of course, he's wrong.
“Is the theory that lifeless, mindless atoms (obeying either deterministic laws or probabilistic laws of indeterminism) produce weird, unfathomable, ineffectual, pointless, mental illusions supposed to be more convincing than that we have genuine free will? The whole notion that a world made exclusively of matter, as materialist fundamentalists such as [Sam] Harris insist, can suffer from illusions, delusions, hallucinations, mental illness, mental breakdowns, mental disorders, is so spectacularly silly that no sane person could ever take it seriously. Harris, in his pathological determination to rid us of free will, has posited instead a world of delusional atoms in need of psychiatric help! What, do electrons hallucinate? Do protons have delusions of grandeur? Do quarks imagine themselves free? Are 1D-strings narcissistic? If none of these things is true, how on earth does Sam Harris propose that if humans are made of atoms alone, we can suffer from such illusions? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and Harris doesn’t offer any evidence at all!” Mike Hockney
Unless, of course, he missed it.
“God is concerned with, and active in, current world events, but these events are not so 'set in stone' that there is nothing we as human beings can do to change the future.” Curtis Ferrell
Well, that explains almost nothing at all as far as I'm concerned.
“In fact, if you are faced with the prospect of running across an open field in which lightning bolts are going to be a problem, you are much better off if their timing and location are determined by something, since then they may be predictable by you, and hence avoidable. Determinism is the friend, not the foe, of those who dislike inevitability.” Daniel C. Dennett
Of course, your determinism might be entirely different.
"Newton, Darwin and Freud introduced determinism into everything they studied: the first into the universe, the second into the living world, and the third into the psyche. All three types of determinism were to be questioned later, and in the same sequence. It all started with Einstein's denial of Newton's universe.” Alija Izetbegović
The Gall!
“Life is a long agonized illness only curable by death.” Spike Milligan
For some more than others, I suspect.
“We are all slaves, wire-pulled marionettes: You, Ernest, I. There is no freedom on the face of the earth nor above. The tiger that tears a lamb is not free, I am not free, you are not free. All that happens must happen; no word that is said is said in vain, in vain is raised no hand.” Sylvester Viereck George
Unless, of course, he's wrong.
“Is the theory that lifeless, mindless atoms (obeying either deterministic laws or probabilistic laws of indeterminism) produce weird, unfathomable, ineffectual, pointless, mental illusions supposed to be more convincing than that we have genuine free will? The whole notion that a world made exclusively of matter, as materialist fundamentalists such as [Sam] Harris insist, can suffer from illusions, delusions, hallucinations, mental illness, mental breakdowns, mental disorders, is so spectacularly silly that no sane person could ever take it seriously. Harris, in his pathological determination to rid us of free will, has posited instead a world of delusional atoms in need of psychiatric help! What, do electrons hallucinate? Do protons have delusions of grandeur? Do quarks imagine themselves free? Are 1D-strings narcissistic? If none of these things is true, how on earth does Sam Harris propose that if humans are made of atoms alone, we can suffer from such illusions? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and Harris doesn’t offer any evidence at all!” Mike Hockney
Unless, of course, he missed it.
“God is concerned with, and active in, current world events, but these events are not so 'set in stone' that there is nothing we as human beings can do to change the future.” Curtis Ferrell
Well, that explains almost nothing at all as far as I'm concerned.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Women and suicide. And it never skips a generation. Which means that, in this respect, it is the same as suicide and men. Only, depending on which particular generation you are in [either historically or culturally], it can make all the difference in the world. And even to this day we are still discussing and debating what that might possibly mean.
Death by suicide. Go ahead, try getting around dasein here. And that is because the exigencies of life can only be experienced one frame of mind at a time. Some things you can communicate to others and some things you just can’t. The life of each individual. What can possibly be more peculiar than that? Instead, it’s how some will exclude their own life in the calculations.
A day in the life of three different women decades apart but still basically sharing the same cultural and historical landmarks. The modern world of the 20th century. Each living in a context very much different from the others but each sharing features that enable us to connect the dots. But, again, each in our own way.
On the other hand, one of the women is Virginia Woolf. A suicide that many are familiar with. Just as many are familiar with the suicide of Sylvia Plath. Suicides like this are often tricky however because we can never quite be sure of the extent to which they are “clinical” or “existential”. And this has always been a very, very important distinction for me.
It also explores the gaps between those who are still among the living [healthy in other words] and those who are now among the dying [very sick in other words].
There are so many conversations here where the characters talk around any particular subject because there are really not any precise words available in which to nail the damn thing down. Real life in other words. Not the bullshit one that objectivists live in. The one where you actually think you can understand [even judge] the lives of others by your own!
Nicole Kidman loved wearing the prosthetic nose and wore it in private too, mainly as she was undergoing a divorce from Tom Cruise at the time and was attracting a lot of paparazzi interest. Much to her delight, by wearing her fake nose out and about, she found she could easily evade the paparazzi as they didn’t recognize her.
At the Academy Awards ceremony on 23 March 2003, Denzel Washington said as he announced the nominees and winner for Best Actress in a Leading Role, “…and the winner, by a nose, is Nicole Kidman,” in reference to Kidman having worn a prosthetic nose for her performance in the movie.
Meryl Streep decided not to re-read “Mrs. Dalloway” in preparation for the film, as she felt that her character Clarissa would have read it in college and not particularly have understood it then, much as Streep herself had done when she was at college.
Nicole Kidman decided not to imitate Virginia Woolf’s actual tone and voice because she feared people thought it would be comic. IMDb
The Hours
Virginia [aloud…writng a letter to Leonard]: “Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel I can’t go through another one of these terrible times and I shant recover this time. I begin to hear voices and can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems to be the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I know that I am spoiling your life and without me you could work and you will, I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. What I want to say is that I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. Everything is gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.”
Convoluted enough for you?
Woman in a flower shop: I actually tried to read Richard’s novel…
Clarissa: You did? Oh, I know. It is not easy. I know. It did take him ten years to write.
Woman: Maybe it just takes another ten to read.
On average.
Virginia [voiceover while writing]: A woman’s whole life in a single day. Just one day. And in that day her whole life.
Just one day here?
Richard: I can’t take this.
Clarissa: Take what?
Richard: To be proud and brave in front of everybody.
Clarissa: Honey, it’s not a performance.
Richard: Of course it is! I got the prize for my performance. I got the prize for having AIDS and going nuts and being brave about it! I actually got the prize for having come through!
Clarissa: It’s not true.
Richard: For surviving!
Clarissa: It’s not true!
Richard: That’s what I won it for! Do you think they would have given it to me if I were healthy?!
I guess we'll never know.
Richard [to Clarrisa about his poetry]: Everything all mixed up. Like it’s all mixed up now. And I failed. I failed. No matter what you start up with, it ends up being so much less. Sheer fucking pride!
You tell me.
Richard: Come closer. Would you please? Take my hand. Would you be angry…
Clarissa: Would I be angry if you didn’t show up at the party?
Richard: Would you be angry if I died?
Clarissa: If you died?
Richard: Who is this party for?
Clarissa: What do you mean who is it for? Why are you asking? What are you trying to say?
Richard: I am not trying to say anything. I’m saying I think I’m only staying alive to satisfy you.
He thinks he is?
Virginia [aloud to herself about her character]: She’ll die. She’s going to die. That’s what’s going to happen. She’ll kill herself. She’ll kill herself over something which doesn’t seem to matter.
Or couldn't have mattered more.
.
Kitty [to Laura]: But the joke is…all my life I could do anything. I could do anything, really. Except the one thing I wanted.
The punch line?
Vanessa [the sister]: I thought you never came to town.
Virginia: That’s because you no longer ask me.
Vanessa: Are you not forbidden to come? Do the doctors not forbid it?
Virginia: Oh, the doctors!
Vanessa: Do you not pay heed to your doctors?
Virginia: Not when they are a bunch of contemptible Victorians!
Vanessa: So, what do you say? Are you feeling better? Has this vastness made you stronger?
Virginia: I’m saying, Vanessa, that even crazy people like to be asked.
Go ahead, ask me anything.
Angelica [a child]: What happens when we die?
Virginia: What happens?
[pause]
Virginia: We return to the place that we came from.
Angelica: I don’t remember where I came from.
Virginia: Nor do I.
Does anyone?
Virginia [reading aloud from Mrs. Dalloway while Laura follows along in the hotel room]: “Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking toward Bond Street. Did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely? All this must go on without her…Did she resent it or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? It is possible to die. It is possible to die.”
Thank God.
Vanessa [of Virginia]: Your aunt is a very lucky woman, Angelica. She has two lives. The life she is living, and the book she is writing.
If you get her drift.
Angelica: What were you thinking about?
Virginia: I was going to kill my heroine. But I’ve changed my mind. I fear I may have to kill someone else instead.
He wondered who that could be.
Clarissa: I know why he does it, he does it deliberately.
Julia: Oh, is this Richard!
Clarissa: Of course! He did it this morning...he gives me that look.
Julia: What look?
Clarissa: To say…your life is trivial. You…are so…trivial. Just daily stuff, you know, schedules and parties, and…details. That’s what he means. That is what he’s saying.
Julia: Mum, it only matters if you think it’s true. Well? Do you? Tell me.
Clarissa: When I am with him, I feel…Yes, I am living…and when I am not with him, yes, everything does seem sort of…silly.
Want to try that with me?
Virginia: I am attended by doctors. Everywhere I’m attended by doctors who inform me of my own interests!
Leonard: They know your interests.
Virginia: They do not! They do not speak for my interests.
Leonard: I can see that it must be hard for a woman of your…
Virginia: Of what? Of my what exactly?
Leonard: Of your talent to see that she must not be the best judge of her own condition!
Virginia: Who then is a better judge?
Leonard: You have a history! You have a history of confinement. We brought you to Richmond because you may have fits, moods, blackouts, hearing voices…We brought you here to save you from the inevitable damage you intended upon yourself! You tried to kill yourself twice!!
Me too. As I recall.
Leonard: If I didn’t know you better I’d call this ingratitude.
Virginia: I am ungrateful? You call ME ungrateful? My life has been stolen from me. I’m living in a town I have no wish to live in…I’m living a life I have no wish to live…How did this happen?
It sneaks up on some that way.
Virginia: I’m dying in this town.
Leonard: If you were thinking clearly, Virginia, you would recall it was London that brought you low.
Virginia: If I were thinking clearly? If I were thinking clearly?
Leonard: We brought you to Richmond to give you peace.
Virginia: If I were thinking clearly, Leonard, I would tell you that I wrestle alone in the dark, in the deep dark, and that only I can know. Only I can understand my condition. You live with the threat, you tell me you live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too.
And then some.
Virginia: This is my right; it is the right of every human being. I choose not the suffocating anesthetic of the suburbs, but the violent jolt of the Capital, that is my choice. The meanest patient, yes, even the very lowest is allowed some say in the matter of her own prescription. Thereby she defines her humanity. I wish, for your sake, Leonard, I could be happy in this quietness.
[pause]
Virginia: But if it is a choice between Richmond and death, I choose death.
Leonard: Okay, it is London then.
Richmond, Virginia.
Virginia: You cannot find peace by avoiding life, Leonard.
The hell you can't.
Richard: I had this wonderful notion. I took the Xanax and the Ritalin together. It had never occurred to me!
Clarissa: All right Richard, do me one simple favor. Come. Come sit.
Richard: I don’t think I can make it to the party, Clarissa.
Clarissa: You don’t have to go to the party, you don’t have to go to the ceremony, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. You can do as you like.
Richard: But I still have to face the hours, don’t I? I mean, the hours after the party, and the hours after that…
Clarissa: You do have good days still. You know you do.
Richard: Not really. I mean, it’s kind of you to say so, but it’s not really true.
Good days? Tell me about it.
Richard: Like that morning, when you walked out of that old house and you were, you were eighteen, and maybe I was nineteen. I was nineteen years old, and I’d never seen anything so beautiful. You, coming out of a glass door in your early morning, still sleepy. Isn’t it strange, the most ordinary morning in anybody’s life? I’m afraid I can’t make it to the party, Clarissa. You’ve been so good to me, Mrs. Dalloway, I love you. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we’ve been.
[then he rolls out the window to his death]
Finally.
Laura [to Clarissa]: There are times you don’t belong and you think you’re going to kill yourself. Once I went to a hotel. Later that night I made a plan. The plan was I would leave my family when my second child was born. That’s what I did. I got up one morning, made breakfast… went to the bus stop, got on the bus. I’d left a note. I got a job in a library in Canada. It would be wonderful to say you regret it. It would be easy. But what does it mean? What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It’s what you can bare. There it is…no one is going to forgive me. It was death. I chose life.
Just give it time.
Virginia [aloud]: “Dear Leonard. To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard, always the years between us, always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.”
And then the hours we spend here.
Death by suicide. Go ahead, try getting around dasein here. And that is because the exigencies of life can only be experienced one frame of mind at a time. Some things you can communicate to others and some things you just can’t. The life of each individual. What can possibly be more peculiar than that? Instead, it’s how some will exclude their own life in the calculations.
A day in the life of three different women decades apart but still basically sharing the same cultural and historical landmarks. The modern world of the 20th century. Each living in a context very much different from the others but each sharing features that enable us to connect the dots. But, again, each in our own way.
On the other hand, one of the women is Virginia Woolf. A suicide that many are familiar with. Just as many are familiar with the suicide of Sylvia Plath. Suicides like this are often tricky however because we can never quite be sure of the extent to which they are “clinical” or “existential”. And this has always been a very, very important distinction for me.
It also explores the gaps between those who are still among the living [healthy in other words] and those who are now among the dying [very sick in other words].
There are so many conversations here where the characters talk around any particular subject because there are really not any precise words available in which to nail the damn thing down. Real life in other words. Not the bullshit one that objectivists live in. The one where you actually think you can understand [even judge] the lives of others by your own!
Nicole Kidman loved wearing the prosthetic nose and wore it in private too, mainly as she was undergoing a divorce from Tom Cruise at the time and was attracting a lot of paparazzi interest. Much to her delight, by wearing her fake nose out and about, she found she could easily evade the paparazzi as they didn’t recognize her.
At the Academy Awards ceremony on 23 March 2003, Denzel Washington said as he announced the nominees and winner for Best Actress in a Leading Role, “…and the winner, by a nose, is Nicole Kidman,” in reference to Kidman having worn a prosthetic nose for her performance in the movie.
Meryl Streep decided not to re-read “Mrs. Dalloway” in preparation for the film, as she felt that her character Clarissa would have read it in college and not particularly have understood it then, much as Streep herself had done when she was at college.
Nicole Kidman decided not to imitate Virginia Woolf’s actual tone and voice because she feared people thought it would be comic. IMDb
The Hours
Virginia [aloud…writng a letter to Leonard]: “Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel I can’t go through another one of these terrible times and I shant recover this time. I begin to hear voices and can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems to be the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I know that I am spoiling your life and without me you could work and you will, I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. What I want to say is that I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. Everything is gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.”
Convoluted enough for you?
Woman in a flower shop: I actually tried to read Richard’s novel…
Clarissa: You did? Oh, I know. It is not easy. I know. It did take him ten years to write.
Woman: Maybe it just takes another ten to read.
On average.
Virginia [voiceover while writing]: A woman’s whole life in a single day. Just one day. And in that day her whole life.
Just one day here?
Richard: I can’t take this.
Clarissa: Take what?
Richard: To be proud and brave in front of everybody.
Clarissa: Honey, it’s not a performance.
Richard: Of course it is! I got the prize for my performance. I got the prize for having AIDS and going nuts and being brave about it! I actually got the prize for having come through!
Clarissa: It’s not true.
Richard: For surviving!
Clarissa: It’s not true!
Richard: That’s what I won it for! Do you think they would have given it to me if I were healthy?!
I guess we'll never know.
Richard [to Clarrisa about his poetry]: Everything all mixed up. Like it’s all mixed up now. And I failed. I failed. No matter what you start up with, it ends up being so much less. Sheer fucking pride!
You tell me.
Richard: Come closer. Would you please? Take my hand. Would you be angry…
Clarissa: Would I be angry if you didn’t show up at the party?
Richard: Would you be angry if I died?
Clarissa: If you died?
Richard: Who is this party for?
Clarissa: What do you mean who is it for? Why are you asking? What are you trying to say?
Richard: I am not trying to say anything. I’m saying I think I’m only staying alive to satisfy you.
He thinks he is?
Virginia [aloud to herself about her character]: She’ll die. She’s going to die. That’s what’s going to happen. She’ll kill herself. She’ll kill herself over something which doesn’t seem to matter.
Or couldn't have mattered more.
.
Kitty [to Laura]: But the joke is…all my life I could do anything. I could do anything, really. Except the one thing I wanted.
The punch line?
Vanessa [the sister]: I thought you never came to town.
Virginia: That’s because you no longer ask me.
Vanessa: Are you not forbidden to come? Do the doctors not forbid it?
Virginia: Oh, the doctors!
Vanessa: Do you not pay heed to your doctors?
Virginia: Not when they are a bunch of contemptible Victorians!
Vanessa: So, what do you say? Are you feeling better? Has this vastness made you stronger?
Virginia: I’m saying, Vanessa, that even crazy people like to be asked.
Go ahead, ask me anything.
Angelica [a child]: What happens when we die?
Virginia: What happens?
[pause]
Virginia: We return to the place that we came from.
Angelica: I don’t remember where I came from.
Virginia: Nor do I.
Does anyone?
Virginia [reading aloud from Mrs. Dalloway while Laura follows along in the hotel room]: “Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking toward Bond Street. Did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely? All this must go on without her…Did she resent it or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? It is possible to die. It is possible to die.”
Thank God.
Vanessa [of Virginia]: Your aunt is a very lucky woman, Angelica. She has two lives. The life she is living, and the book she is writing.
If you get her drift.
Angelica: What were you thinking about?
Virginia: I was going to kill my heroine. But I’ve changed my mind. I fear I may have to kill someone else instead.
He wondered who that could be.
Clarissa: I know why he does it, he does it deliberately.
Julia: Oh, is this Richard!
Clarissa: Of course! He did it this morning...he gives me that look.
Julia: What look?
Clarissa: To say…your life is trivial. You…are so…trivial. Just daily stuff, you know, schedules and parties, and…details. That’s what he means. That is what he’s saying.
Julia: Mum, it only matters if you think it’s true. Well? Do you? Tell me.
Clarissa: When I am with him, I feel…Yes, I am living…and when I am not with him, yes, everything does seem sort of…silly.
Want to try that with me?
Virginia: I am attended by doctors. Everywhere I’m attended by doctors who inform me of my own interests!
Leonard: They know your interests.
Virginia: They do not! They do not speak for my interests.
Leonard: I can see that it must be hard for a woman of your…
Virginia: Of what? Of my what exactly?
Leonard: Of your talent to see that she must not be the best judge of her own condition!
Virginia: Who then is a better judge?
Leonard: You have a history! You have a history of confinement. We brought you to Richmond because you may have fits, moods, blackouts, hearing voices…We brought you here to save you from the inevitable damage you intended upon yourself! You tried to kill yourself twice!!
Me too. As I recall.
Leonard: If I didn’t know you better I’d call this ingratitude.
Virginia: I am ungrateful? You call ME ungrateful? My life has been stolen from me. I’m living in a town I have no wish to live in…I’m living a life I have no wish to live…How did this happen?
It sneaks up on some that way.
Virginia: I’m dying in this town.
Leonard: If you were thinking clearly, Virginia, you would recall it was London that brought you low.
Virginia: If I were thinking clearly? If I were thinking clearly?
Leonard: We brought you to Richmond to give you peace.
Virginia: If I were thinking clearly, Leonard, I would tell you that I wrestle alone in the dark, in the deep dark, and that only I can know. Only I can understand my condition. You live with the threat, you tell me you live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too.
And then some.
Virginia: This is my right; it is the right of every human being. I choose not the suffocating anesthetic of the suburbs, but the violent jolt of the Capital, that is my choice. The meanest patient, yes, even the very lowest is allowed some say in the matter of her own prescription. Thereby she defines her humanity. I wish, for your sake, Leonard, I could be happy in this quietness.
[pause]
Virginia: But if it is a choice between Richmond and death, I choose death.
Leonard: Okay, it is London then.
Richmond, Virginia.
Virginia: You cannot find peace by avoiding life, Leonard.
The hell you can't.
Richard: I had this wonderful notion. I took the Xanax and the Ritalin together. It had never occurred to me!
Clarissa: All right Richard, do me one simple favor. Come. Come sit.
Richard: I don’t think I can make it to the party, Clarissa.
Clarissa: You don’t have to go to the party, you don’t have to go to the ceremony, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. You can do as you like.
Richard: But I still have to face the hours, don’t I? I mean, the hours after the party, and the hours after that…
Clarissa: You do have good days still. You know you do.
Richard: Not really. I mean, it’s kind of you to say so, but it’s not really true.
Good days? Tell me about it.
Richard: Like that morning, when you walked out of that old house and you were, you were eighteen, and maybe I was nineteen. I was nineteen years old, and I’d never seen anything so beautiful. You, coming out of a glass door in your early morning, still sleepy. Isn’t it strange, the most ordinary morning in anybody’s life? I’m afraid I can’t make it to the party, Clarissa. You’ve been so good to me, Mrs. Dalloway, I love you. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we’ve been.
[then he rolls out the window to his death]
Finally.
Laura [to Clarissa]: There are times you don’t belong and you think you’re going to kill yourself. Once I went to a hotel. Later that night I made a plan. The plan was I would leave my family when my second child was born. That’s what I did. I got up one morning, made breakfast… went to the bus stop, got on the bus. I’d left a note. I got a job in a library in Canada. It would be wonderful to say you regret it. It would be easy. But what does it mean? What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It’s what you can bare. There it is…no one is going to forgive me. It was death. I chose life.
Just give it time.
Virginia [aloud]: “Dear Leonard. To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard, always the years between us, always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.”
And then the hours we spend here.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
This is the sort of film that many will pan because “nothing happens”. Indeed, to them, it is just a bunch of young, immature men and women [or “boys” and “girls”] who prattle on and on about things that don’t really seem connected to the practical reality of living at all.
Not only that but most of them come from wealthy families and seem hopelessly preoccupied with being out in “society” – out there displaying their carefully refined wit and charm.
But then out of the blue a working class bloke is among them. He is a “Fourierist”. And, for some, that is practically a Communist. And yet he is a very engaging and personable fellow. If a bit didactic. But then, well, so are they. Or at least Charlie is.
In any event, they are all able to engage rather adroitly in some rather clever and intelligent discussions about lots and lots of things. God, class, gender, film, books, art, love, lust. And one of them is what might be called “exquisitely cynical”. That would be Nick.
Oddly enough though many folks will tell you they like this film precisely because it is not this way at all. They liked the characters for, well, for other reasons. Or maybe I just tend to gravitate more to characters like Nick.
Anyway, if you are someone who enjoys a film where [literally] the only thing that does happen revolves around intelligent and articulate folks going from place to place – “in society” – and discussing all of the convoluted complexities of human interactions [relationships] in and out of it, you’ll probably like it as much as I did.
This was the first film for almost all of the young cast. This was [also] the last film for most of them. Only three or four of them went on to have careers as actors.
The female lead of Audrey was cast after the director’s wife ran into Carolyn Farina while shopping at the Macy’s store where Farina was working at the perfume section. She had no previous acting experience.
Linda Gillies who played Audrey’s mother is in real life the mother of Isabel Gillies who played Cynthia McLean. Linda got the role as Mrs. Rouget after Whit Stillman saw her during her visit on the set with her daughter and thought she looked motherly. IMDb
Metropolitan
Charlie: Of course there is a God. We all basically know there is.
Cynthia: I know no such thing.
Charlie: Of course you do. When you think to yourself, and most of our waking life is taken up thinking to ourselves, you must have that feeling that your thoughts aren’t entirely wasted, that in some sense they are being heard. Rationally, they aren’t. You’re entirely alone. Even the people to whom we are closest can have no real idea of what is going on in our minds. We aren’t devastated by loneliness because, at a hardly conscious level, we don’t accept that we’re entirely alone. I think this sensation of being silently listened to with total comprehension… something you never find in real life… represents our innate belief in a supreme being, some all-comprehending intelligence.
Of course, your own of course may be different.
Charlie: What it shows is that a kind of belief is innate in all of us. At some point most of us lose that after which it can only be regained by a conscious act of faith.
Cynthia: You’ve experienced that?
Charlie: Uh, no, I haven’t. I-I hope to someday.
I guess we'll never know.
Audrey: I remember a long letter you wrote to Serena about agrarian socialism. I think it was one of the first things to set Alice Dreyer off about Marxism.
Jane: Since then she’s joined the Red Underground Army. If she blows herself up it will be your fault.
Click, of course.
Audrey: It’s actually surprising to see you at something like this. In your letters you expressed a vehement opposition to deb parties…and to conventional society in general. I take it you’ve changed your mind.
Tom: No, I’m just as much opposed to them as ever.
Audrey: Then what made you decide to come tonight?
Nick: He got an invitation.
Tom: He’s right. I got an invitation and didn’t particularly have anything else to do.
Well, that and the crush he has on Audrey.
Charlie: It seems a bit ridiculous for someone to say they’re morally opposed to deb parties and then attend them anyway. It’s…it’s untenable.
Tom: I think it is justifiable to go once, to know first hand what it is you opposed. I’d read Veblen, but it was amazing to see that these things still go on.
Jane: You’re a Marxist?
Tom: No, I’m a committed socialist, not a Marxist. I favor the socialist model developed by the 19th century French social critic Fourier.
In other words, no "dictatorship of the proletariat".
Charlie: Fourierism was tried in the late nineteenth century… and it failed. Wasn’t Brook Farm Fourierist? It failed.
Tom: That’s debatable.
Charlie: Whether Brook Farm failed?
Tom: That it ceased to exist, I’ll grant you, but whether or not it failed cannot be definitively said.
Charlie: Well, for me, ceasing to exist is - is failure. I mean, that’s pretty definitive.
Tom: Well, everyone ceases to exist. Doesn’t mean everyone’s a failure.
Next up: failing here.
Charlie: I think that we are all in a sense, doomed.
Nick: What are you talking about?
Charlie: Downward social mobility. We hear a lot about the great social mobility in America, with the focus usually on the comparative ease of moving upwards. What’s less discussed is how easy it is to go down. I think that’s the direction that we’re all heading in. And I think that the downward fall is going to be very fast—not just for us as individuals—but for the entire Preppie Class.
Nope. Nearly 35 years later and I suspect they are still going strong.
Nick: You’re opposed to these parties on principle.Tom: Yes.
Nick: Exactly what principle is that?
Tom: Well…
Nick: The principle that one shouldn’t be out eating hors d’oeuvres when one could be home worrying about the less fortunate.
Tom: Pretty much, yes.
Nick: Has it ever occured to you that you are the less fortunate? I mean, there is something a tiny bit arrogant about people going around feeling sorry for other people they consider less fortunate. Are the more fortunate really so terrific? Do you want some much richer guy going around saying, “Poor Tom Townsend doesn’t even have a winter jacket. Well, I can’t go to anymore parties”?
Tom: That’s a bit cynical.
Nick: It’s not just a matter of what you personally prefer. I’ll tell you this in confidence. You’ve made a big impression on these girls.
Tom: Oh, come on…
Nick: No, I’m serious. They like you and are now counting on you as an escort.
And then we learn all about the psychological “vulnerabilities” of preppie girls. Tom is now practically obligated to go along.
Nick: Our parents' generation was never interested in keeping up standards. They wanted to be happy, but the last way to be happy is to make it your objective in life.
Tom: I wonder if our generation’s any better than our parents’.
Nick: Oh, it’s far worse. Our generation is probably the worst since the Protestant Reformation. It’s barbaric, but a barbarism even worse than the old-fashioned, straightforward kind. Now barbarism is cloaked with all sorts of self-righteousness and moral superiority.
Trumped, as it were.
Nick [to the group]: Rick Von Slonecker is tall, rich, good looking, stupid, dishonest, conceited, a bully, liar, drunk and thief, an egomaniac, and probably psychotic. In short, highly attractive to women.
How about you?
Audrey: What Jane Austen novels have you read?
Tom: None. I don’t read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists’ ideas as well as the critics’ thinking. With fiction I can never forget that none of it really happened, that it’s all just made up by the author.
New thread?
Charlie: The term “bourgeois” has almost always been…been one of contempt. Yet it is precisely the bourgeoisie which is responsible for, well, for nearly everything good that has happened in our civilization over the past four centuries. You know the French film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie? When I first heard that title I thought, “finally, someone is gonna tell the truth about the bourgeoisie.” What a disappointment. It would be hard to imagine a less fair or accurate portrait.
Sally: Well, of course. Bunuel’s a surrealist. Despising the bourgeoisie is part of their credo.
Actually, just spelling it correctly stumps many.
Jane: Be careful Audrey, there is something dubious about Tom.
Audrey: What?
Jane: This whole thing about his being a radical when he’s obviously not…and being over Serena when he’s obviously not.
Audrey: Everyone has some contradictions.
Me more than you, right?
Charlie: I don’t think “preppy” is a very useful term. It’s ridiculous to refer to a man in his 70s, like Averell Harriman], as a preppy. And none of the other terms people use – WASP, PLU et cetera – are of much use either. And that’s why I prefer the term UHB.
Nick: What?
Charlie: UHB – It’s an acronym for “urban haute bourgeoisie”
Cynthia: Is our language so impoverished that we have to use acronyms of French phrases to make ourselves understood?
Charlie: Yes.
Well, maybe.
Nick [to the group]: Do you know what “pulling a train” means?
Nope. None of them did.
Nick: The titled aristocracy are the scum of the earth.
Sally: You always say “titled” aristocrats. What about “untitled” aristocrats?
Nick: Well, I could hardly despise them, could I? That would be self-hatred.
Good point?
Sally: I call.
Nick: I had no cards. Why did you call?
Sally: I felt like it.
Nick: Playing strip poker with an exhibitionist somehow takes the challenge away.
Up next: strip philosophy.
Tom: It’s as if my father is incredibly angry with me but I can’t figure out why. I don’t know what it could be.
Nick: You don’t?
Tom: No.
Nick: One word – “stepmother”.
Tom: Well, I hope I can talk to him and straighten things out.
Nick: I’m sure nothing you did or said has anything to do with it…and nothing you say or do will change anything.
Sally: That’s awfully pessimistic.
Nick: It’s the way things are. The most important thing to realize about parents is that there is absolutely nothing you can do about them.
Me? I thought of something.
Audrey [about a truth or dare type game]: I don’t think we should play this.
Sally: Why not?
Audrey: There are good reasons why people don’t go around telling each other their most intimate thoughts.
Cynthia: What do you have to hide?
Audrey: No, I just know that games like this can be really dangerous.
Tom: Dangerous?
Sally: I don’t see what’s dangerous about it.
Audrey: You don’t have to. Other people have. That’s how it became a convention. People saw the harm in what excessive candor can do.
But then she agrees to play. And then Tom’s candor bites her right on the ass.[/b]
Nick: A composite. Like at New York magazine.
Jane: Whatever. And, that you’re completely impossible and out of control, with some sort of drug problem and a fixation on what you consider Rick Von Sloneker’s wickedness. You’re a snob, a sexist, totally obnoxious, and tiresome. And lately, you’ve gotten just weird. Why should we believe anything you say?
Nick: I’m not tiresome.
Touché?
Man at Bar: The acid test is whether you take any pleasure in responding to the question “What do you do?” I can’t bear it.
Unless, of course, you're retired.
Charlie: Hey, look at this.
Tom: What is it?
Charlie: Looks like some girl’s panties.
Tom: Jesus, that bastard!
Nope, not really.
Tom [pulls out a gun after Rick punches him]: Get back, Rick!
Rick: Jesus, he’s got a gun!
Charlie: I warn you! He’s a Fourierist!
The horror! The horror!
Tom: Did anything happen?
Audrey: Of course not.
Tom: You mean you were never interested in Von Sloneker at all?
[pause as Audrey looks ambivalently towards him]
Tom: They why did you come out here?
Audrey: To get a suntan…and the whole thing with the Rat Pack was getting claustrophobic. And Cynthia insisted I come. She’s terribly impressed with Rick.
Tom: It’s not something Jane Austin would have done.
You tell me.
Not only that but most of them come from wealthy families and seem hopelessly preoccupied with being out in “society” – out there displaying their carefully refined wit and charm.
But then out of the blue a working class bloke is among them. He is a “Fourierist”. And, for some, that is practically a Communist. And yet he is a very engaging and personable fellow. If a bit didactic. But then, well, so are they. Or at least Charlie is.
In any event, they are all able to engage rather adroitly in some rather clever and intelligent discussions about lots and lots of things. God, class, gender, film, books, art, love, lust. And one of them is what might be called “exquisitely cynical”. That would be Nick.
Oddly enough though many folks will tell you they like this film precisely because it is not this way at all. They liked the characters for, well, for other reasons. Or maybe I just tend to gravitate more to characters like Nick.
Anyway, if you are someone who enjoys a film where [literally] the only thing that does happen revolves around intelligent and articulate folks going from place to place – “in society” – and discussing all of the convoluted complexities of human interactions [relationships] in and out of it, you’ll probably like it as much as I did.
This was the first film for almost all of the young cast. This was [also] the last film for most of them. Only three or four of them went on to have careers as actors.
The female lead of Audrey was cast after the director’s wife ran into Carolyn Farina while shopping at the Macy’s store where Farina was working at the perfume section. She had no previous acting experience.
Linda Gillies who played Audrey’s mother is in real life the mother of Isabel Gillies who played Cynthia McLean. Linda got the role as Mrs. Rouget after Whit Stillman saw her during her visit on the set with her daughter and thought she looked motherly. IMDb
Metropolitan
Charlie: Of course there is a God. We all basically know there is.
Cynthia: I know no such thing.
Charlie: Of course you do. When you think to yourself, and most of our waking life is taken up thinking to ourselves, you must have that feeling that your thoughts aren’t entirely wasted, that in some sense they are being heard. Rationally, they aren’t. You’re entirely alone. Even the people to whom we are closest can have no real idea of what is going on in our minds. We aren’t devastated by loneliness because, at a hardly conscious level, we don’t accept that we’re entirely alone. I think this sensation of being silently listened to with total comprehension… something you never find in real life… represents our innate belief in a supreme being, some all-comprehending intelligence.
Of course, your own of course may be different.
Charlie: What it shows is that a kind of belief is innate in all of us. At some point most of us lose that after which it can only be regained by a conscious act of faith.
Cynthia: You’ve experienced that?
Charlie: Uh, no, I haven’t. I-I hope to someday.
I guess we'll never know.
Audrey: I remember a long letter you wrote to Serena about agrarian socialism. I think it was one of the first things to set Alice Dreyer off about Marxism.
Jane: Since then she’s joined the Red Underground Army. If she blows herself up it will be your fault.
Click, of course.
Audrey: It’s actually surprising to see you at something like this. In your letters you expressed a vehement opposition to deb parties…and to conventional society in general. I take it you’ve changed your mind.
Tom: No, I’m just as much opposed to them as ever.
Audrey: Then what made you decide to come tonight?
Nick: He got an invitation.
Tom: He’s right. I got an invitation and didn’t particularly have anything else to do.
Well, that and the crush he has on Audrey.
Charlie: It seems a bit ridiculous for someone to say they’re morally opposed to deb parties and then attend them anyway. It’s…it’s untenable.
Tom: I think it is justifiable to go once, to know first hand what it is you opposed. I’d read Veblen, but it was amazing to see that these things still go on.
Jane: You’re a Marxist?
Tom: No, I’m a committed socialist, not a Marxist. I favor the socialist model developed by the 19th century French social critic Fourier.
In other words, no "dictatorship of the proletariat".
Charlie: Fourierism was tried in the late nineteenth century… and it failed. Wasn’t Brook Farm Fourierist? It failed.
Tom: That’s debatable.
Charlie: Whether Brook Farm failed?
Tom: That it ceased to exist, I’ll grant you, but whether or not it failed cannot be definitively said.
Charlie: Well, for me, ceasing to exist is - is failure. I mean, that’s pretty definitive.
Tom: Well, everyone ceases to exist. Doesn’t mean everyone’s a failure.
Next up: failing here.
Charlie: I think that we are all in a sense, doomed.
Nick: What are you talking about?
Charlie: Downward social mobility. We hear a lot about the great social mobility in America, with the focus usually on the comparative ease of moving upwards. What’s less discussed is how easy it is to go down. I think that’s the direction that we’re all heading in. And I think that the downward fall is going to be very fast—not just for us as individuals—but for the entire Preppie Class.
Nope. Nearly 35 years later and I suspect they are still going strong.
Nick: You’re opposed to these parties on principle.Tom: Yes.
Nick: Exactly what principle is that?
Tom: Well…
Nick: The principle that one shouldn’t be out eating hors d’oeuvres when one could be home worrying about the less fortunate.
Tom: Pretty much, yes.
Nick: Has it ever occured to you that you are the less fortunate? I mean, there is something a tiny bit arrogant about people going around feeling sorry for other people they consider less fortunate. Are the more fortunate really so terrific? Do you want some much richer guy going around saying, “Poor Tom Townsend doesn’t even have a winter jacket. Well, I can’t go to anymore parties”?
Tom: That’s a bit cynical.
Nick: It’s not just a matter of what you personally prefer. I’ll tell you this in confidence. You’ve made a big impression on these girls.
Tom: Oh, come on…
Nick: No, I’m serious. They like you and are now counting on you as an escort.
And then we learn all about the psychological “vulnerabilities” of preppie girls. Tom is now practically obligated to go along.
Nick: Our parents' generation was never interested in keeping up standards. They wanted to be happy, but the last way to be happy is to make it your objective in life.
Tom: I wonder if our generation’s any better than our parents’.
Nick: Oh, it’s far worse. Our generation is probably the worst since the Protestant Reformation. It’s barbaric, but a barbarism even worse than the old-fashioned, straightforward kind. Now barbarism is cloaked with all sorts of self-righteousness and moral superiority.
Trumped, as it were.
Nick [to the group]: Rick Von Slonecker is tall, rich, good looking, stupid, dishonest, conceited, a bully, liar, drunk and thief, an egomaniac, and probably psychotic. In short, highly attractive to women.
How about you?
Audrey: What Jane Austen novels have you read?
Tom: None. I don’t read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists’ ideas as well as the critics’ thinking. With fiction I can never forget that none of it really happened, that it’s all just made up by the author.
New thread?
Charlie: The term “bourgeois” has almost always been…been one of contempt. Yet it is precisely the bourgeoisie which is responsible for, well, for nearly everything good that has happened in our civilization over the past four centuries. You know the French film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie? When I first heard that title I thought, “finally, someone is gonna tell the truth about the bourgeoisie.” What a disappointment. It would be hard to imagine a less fair or accurate portrait.
Sally: Well, of course. Bunuel’s a surrealist. Despising the bourgeoisie is part of their credo.
Actually, just spelling it correctly stumps many.
Jane: Be careful Audrey, there is something dubious about Tom.
Audrey: What?
Jane: This whole thing about his being a radical when he’s obviously not…and being over Serena when he’s obviously not.
Audrey: Everyone has some contradictions.
Me more than you, right?
Charlie: I don’t think “preppy” is a very useful term. It’s ridiculous to refer to a man in his 70s, like Averell Harriman], as a preppy. And none of the other terms people use – WASP, PLU et cetera – are of much use either. And that’s why I prefer the term UHB.
Nick: What?
Charlie: UHB – It’s an acronym for “urban haute bourgeoisie”
Cynthia: Is our language so impoverished that we have to use acronyms of French phrases to make ourselves understood?
Charlie: Yes.
Well, maybe.
Nick [to the group]: Do you know what “pulling a train” means?
Nope. None of them did.
Nick: The titled aristocracy are the scum of the earth.
Sally: You always say “titled” aristocrats. What about “untitled” aristocrats?
Nick: Well, I could hardly despise them, could I? That would be self-hatred.
Good point?
Sally: I call.
Nick: I had no cards. Why did you call?
Sally: I felt like it.
Nick: Playing strip poker with an exhibitionist somehow takes the challenge away.
Up next: strip philosophy.
Tom: It’s as if my father is incredibly angry with me but I can’t figure out why. I don’t know what it could be.
Nick: You don’t?
Tom: No.
Nick: One word – “stepmother”.
Tom: Well, I hope I can talk to him and straighten things out.
Nick: I’m sure nothing you did or said has anything to do with it…and nothing you say or do will change anything.
Sally: That’s awfully pessimistic.
Nick: It’s the way things are. The most important thing to realize about parents is that there is absolutely nothing you can do about them.
Me? I thought of something.
Audrey [about a truth or dare type game]: I don’t think we should play this.
Sally: Why not?
Audrey: There are good reasons why people don’t go around telling each other their most intimate thoughts.
Cynthia: What do you have to hide?
Audrey: No, I just know that games like this can be really dangerous.
Tom: Dangerous?
Sally: I don’t see what’s dangerous about it.
Audrey: You don’t have to. Other people have. That’s how it became a convention. People saw the harm in what excessive candor can do.
But then she agrees to play. And then Tom’s candor bites her right on the ass.[/b]
Nick: A composite. Like at New York magazine.
Jane: Whatever. And, that you’re completely impossible and out of control, with some sort of drug problem and a fixation on what you consider Rick Von Sloneker’s wickedness. You’re a snob, a sexist, totally obnoxious, and tiresome. And lately, you’ve gotten just weird. Why should we believe anything you say?
Nick: I’m not tiresome.
Touché?
Man at Bar: The acid test is whether you take any pleasure in responding to the question “What do you do?” I can’t bear it.
Unless, of course, you're retired.
Charlie: Hey, look at this.
Tom: What is it?
Charlie: Looks like some girl’s panties.
Tom: Jesus, that bastard!
Nope, not really.
Tom [pulls out a gun after Rick punches him]: Get back, Rick!
Rick: Jesus, he’s got a gun!
Charlie: I warn you! He’s a Fourierist!
The horror! The horror!
Tom: Did anything happen?
Audrey: Of course not.
Tom: You mean you were never interested in Von Sloneker at all?
[pause as Audrey looks ambivalently towards him]
Tom: They why did you come out here?
Audrey: To get a suntan…and the whole thing with the Rat Pack was getting claustrophobic. And Cynthia insisted I come. She’s terribly impressed with Rick.
Tom: It’s not something Jane Austin would have done.
You tell me.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Suicide
“The language of love letters is the same as suicide notes.” Courtney Love
Did she or didn't she? If you get my drift.
"No man ever threw away life while it was worth keeping.” David Hume
And he knew this...how?
“In the meantime, I could withdraw to my room, could hide and sleep as if I were dead” Elizabeth Wurtzel
With or without Prozac.
“Crap.
It's all crap.
Living is crap.
Life has no meaning.
None. Nowhere to be found.
Crap.
Why doesn't anybody realize this?” K-Ske Hasegawa
Because, existentially, for any number of us, it is anything but.
“A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future.” Albert Camus
I know that I won't.
“Life’s greatest gift is the freedom it leaves you to step out of it whenever you choose.” André Breton
Praise the Lord?
“The language of love letters is the same as suicide notes.” Courtney Love
Did she or didn't she? If you get my drift.
"No man ever threw away life while it was worth keeping.” David Hume
And he knew this...how?
“In the meantime, I could withdraw to my room, could hide and sleep as if I were dead” Elizabeth Wurtzel
With or without Prozac.
“Crap.
It's all crap.
Living is crap.
Life has no meaning.
None. Nowhere to be found.
Crap.
Why doesn't anybody realize this?” K-Ske Hasegawa
Because, existentially, for any number of us, it is anything but.
“A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future.” Albert Camus
I know that I won't.
“Life’s greatest gift is the freedom it leaves you to step out of it whenever you choose.” André Breton
Praise the Lord?
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
It’s inevitable: The Hunger Games is just a remake [if not a ripoff] of Battle Royale!
Not that we can ever really know for certain if this is true. Objectively, say.
A far better film, in my view. If not objectively.
Anyway, when you consider the nature of our postmodern culture and the way it pops up everywhere on “reality TV”, how far off can something like this really be? Here though the citizens [apparently] are required to watch the games. Still we all know that if and when this all becomes a real reality, you wouldn’t have to actually force all that many, right? In fact, the powers that be will probably make it a pay-per-view “event”. A spectacle. Like Wrestlemania. They’ll make a fortune.
But progress has been made. Had this film been made 60 years ago, the participants would have all been male. Well, if you call that progress.
Or think of it like this. I was drafted into the United States Army myself. I was sent over to South Vietnam. I was there to kill or to be killed. No, it wasn’t The Hunger Games. But, really, how far removed is it? And here of course being impoverished seems to play a considerable role regarding some who “volunteer” to play. In fact, a few are straight out of Deliverance. Only [of course] considerably better looking. But then pretty protagonists will always be a constant in Hollywood dystopias.
And yet, as dystopias go, this one seems especially improbable to me. You can’t help but wonder at times if the whole thing isn’t meant to be taken tongue in cheek. And some of the characters in the ruling class are downright preposterous. The whole thing just reeks of scripting. There are parts that were [to me] nothing short of ridiculous. Especially that part where Katniss up on the screen reconfigures into the workers of the world uniting [and fighting back] in District 12. How could Marx’s own rendition have gotten things so wrong?
Always that same gap between the potential to explore these things intelligently but going instead for the cheap [and oh so predictable] thrills. After all, the whole thing is basically rigged by the folks behind the curtains. Which [of course] they barely scratch the surface regarding.
Jennifer Lawrence was paid what was, for her, the high fee of $500,000. It took her three days before she accepted the role because she was unsure how the role would clearly affect her career, since her background was largely on the indie film circuit. For The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013), she was paid $10 million, 20 times more than the initial offer.
Panem is located in a post-apocalyptic North America whose land mass has been reduced by rising sea levels. It is generally agreed that the Capitol is in the Rocky Mountains, possibly Colorado, and that the District 12 town where Katniss grew up is somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains, possibly Kentucky or West Virginia.
Although it is mentioned briefly that Gale has had his name put into the drawing multiple times, it is not fully explained in the movie why someone might want to do this other than when Katniss tells Prim when she comes to say goodbye not to put her name in more because it’s not worth getting enough food. Each additional time a name is entered raises the possibility that the person will be selected to compete, and probably die, in the games. In the source novel, it is explained that putting your name in an additional time garners your family an additional portion of grain and oil, so families experiencing especially terrible privation may put their children’s names into the drawing more than once in exchange for that small amount of extra food.
Body Count: 39. (17 from a flashback)
In the early scenes depicting life in District 12, an homage to Dorothea Lange’s iconic Depression-era photo is seen in the shot of the lady looking out the window with her fingers on one cheek. Later in the film, the Reaping scene features images of the same grand neo-classical architecture, '40s style microphones, and red birds of prey banners that were all part of the Third Reich. IMDb
The Hunger Games
Seneca: I think it’s our tradition…It comes out of a particularly painful part of our history. But it’s been a way we’ve been able to heal. At first it was a reminder of the rebellion. It was the price the Districts had to pay. But I think it has grown from that. I think it's a…It's something that knits us all together.
The MAGA mentality, let's say.
President Snow [voiceover]: War, terrible war. Widows, orphans, a motherless child. This was the uprising that rocked our land. Thirteen districts rebelled against the country that fed them, loved them, protected them. Brother turned on brother until nothing remained. And then came the peace, hard fought, sorely won. A people rose up from the ashes and a new era was born. But freedom has a cost. When the traitors were defeated, we swore as a nation we would never know this treason again. And so it was decreed that, each year, the various districts of Panem would offer up, in tribute, one young man and woman to fight to the death in a pageant of honor, courage and sacrifice. The lone victor, bathed in riches, would serve as a reminder of our generosity and our forgiveness. This is how we remember our past. This is how we safeguard our future.
Since everything has to be rationalized, everything will be.
Gale: What if they did? Just one year. What if everyone just stopped watching?
Katniss: But they won’t, Gale.
Gale: What if they did? What if we did?
Katniss: Won’t happen.
Gale: You root for your favorite, you cry when they get killed. It’s sick.
Katniss: Gale.
Gale: No one watches and they don’t have a game. It’s as simple as that. What?
Katniss: Nothing.
Gale: Fine. Laugh at me.
Katniss: I’m not laughing at you!
Snickering perhaps?
Gale: We could do it, you know? Take off. Live in the woods. It’s what we do anyway.
Katniss: They’d catch us.
Gale: Maybe not.
Katniss: Cut out our tongues or worse. We wouldn’t make it five miles.
How far did you make it?
Gale: Listen to me. You’re stronger than they are. You are. Get to a bow.
Katniss: They may not have one…
Gale: They will if you show 'em how good you are. They just want a good show. That’s all they want. If they don’t have a bow, then you make one, okay? You know how to hunt.
Katniss: Animals.
Gale: It’s no different, Katniss.
In part because we are, after all, animals ourselves.
Peeta: You’re our mentor, you’re supposed to go…Our mentor is supposed to tell us how to get sponsors and give us advice.
Haymitch: Oh, okay. Ummm…Embrace the probability of your imminent death, and know in your heart that there’s nothing I can do to save you.
Any inninent deaths here?
Haymitch: You really wanna know how to stay alive? You get people to like you. In the middle of the games when you’re starving or freezing, some water, a knife or even some matches can mean the difference between life and death. And those things only come from Sponsors. And to get Sponsors, you have to make people like you. And right now, sweetheart, you’re not off to a really good start.
Sponsors? Take a wild guess.
Haymitch [about Cato]: He’s a Career. You know what that is?
Katniss: From District 1.
Haymitch: And 2. They train in a special academy until they’re eighteen, then they volunteer. By that point, they’re pretty lethal.
So, any dope scandals to speak of?
Peeta [to Katniss]: I have no chance of winning. None! Alright? It’s true. Everybody knows it. You know what my mother said? She said, “District 12 might finally have a winner!” But she wasn’t talking about me. She was talking about you.
Thanks, Mom.
Haymitch [to Katniss and Peeta]: I don’t know how else to put this: Make sure they remember you.
And the equivalent of that here?
President Snow: Seneca… why do you think we have a winner?
Seneca [frowns]: What do you mean?
President Snow: I mean, why do we have a winner? I mean, if we just wanted to intimidate the districts, why not round up twenty-four of them at random and execute them all at once? Be a lot faster.
[Seneca just stares, confused]
President Snow: Hope.
Seneca: Hope?
President Snow: Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it’s contained.
Seneca: So…?
President Snow: So, CONTAIN it.
Hell, that still works in our own day and age, right? And with the usual cynical treachery in tow.
Katniss: Where’s Peeta?
Haymitch: He’s in his room. Now listen…Tomorrow’s the last day. When they let us walk with our own Tributes right before the game so you and I will be going down at 9.
Katniss: Well, what about him?
Haymitch: No, he says he wants to be trained on his own from now on.
Katniss: What?
Haymitch: This kind of thing does happen at this point. After all, there’s only one winner. Right?
Big Brother!
Katniss: He made me look weak.
Haymitch: He made you look desirable, which, in your case, can’t hurt, sweetheart.
If you get his drift? Though it's not likely you'll miss it.
Haymitch [referring to Katniss and Peeta]: Now, I can sell the star-crossed lovers from District 12.
Katniss: We are NOT star-crossed lovers.
Haymitch: It’s a television show, and being in love with that boy might just get you sponsors which could save your damn life.
Anyone here willing to sponsor me?
Katniss: Listen to them.
Peeta: Yeah. I just don’t want them to change me.
Katniss: How will they change you?
Peeta: I don’t know. Turn me into something I’m not. I-I-I just don’t want to be another piece in their game, you know?
Katniss: You mean you won’t kill anyone?
Peeta: No…I mean, you know, I’m sure I would be just like anybody else when the time comes, but I just keep wishing I could think of a way to show them that they don’t own me. You know, if I’m gonna die, I wanna still be me. Does that make any sense?
Katniss: Yeah. I just can’t afford to think like that. I have my sister.
Ask me if it makes sense.
Haymitch: There is a lot of anger out there. I know you know how to handle a mob, you’ve done it before. If you can’t scare them. Give them something to root for.
Seneca: Such as?
Haymitch: Young love.
Just out of curiosity, what do we root for here?
President Snow: So you like an underdog.
Seneca: Everyone likes an underdog.
President Snow: I don’t. Have you been out there—districts 10, 11, 12?
Seneca: Uh…Not personally, no!
President Snow: I have. Lots of underdogs. Lots of coal too. They grow crops. Minerals. Things we need. There are lots of underdogs. And I think if you could see them. You would not root for them either. I like you. But be careful.
The postmodern class struggle?
Voice over loudspeaker: Attention. Attention Tributes. There has been a slight rule change. The previous provision allowing for two victors from the same district has been revoked. Only one victor maybe crowned. Goodluck. And may the odds be ever in your favor.
Gasp! Who’d have thunk it?!
Haymitch: They’re not happy with you.
Katniss: Why, 'cause I didn’t die?
Nope. It’s more like two hicks from the sticks making fools of the ruling class. True love triumphs. To be continued.
Not that we can ever really know for certain if this is true. Objectively, say.
A far better film, in my view. If not objectively.
Anyway, when you consider the nature of our postmodern culture and the way it pops up everywhere on “reality TV”, how far off can something like this really be? Here though the citizens [apparently] are required to watch the games. Still we all know that if and when this all becomes a real reality, you wouldn’t have to actually force all that many, right? In fact, the powers that be will probably make it a pay-per-view “event”. A spectacle. Like Wrestlemania. They’ll make a fortune.
But progress has been made. Had this film been made 60 years ago, the participants would have all been male. Well, if you call that progress.
Or think of it like this. I was drafted into the United States Army myself. I was sent over to South Vietnam. I was there to kill or to be killed. No, it wasn’t The Hunger Games. But, really, how far removed is it? And here of course being impoverished seems to play a considerable role regarding some who “volunteer” to play. In fact, a few are straight out of Deliverance. Only [of course] considerably better looking. But then pretty protagonists will always be a constant in Hollywood dystopias.
And yet, as dystopias go, this one seems especially improbable to me. You can’t help but wonder at times if the whole thing isn’t meant to be taken tongue in cheek. And some of the characters in the ruling class are downright preposterous. The whole thing just reeks of scripting. There are parts that were [to me] nothing short of ridiculous. Especially that part where Katniss up on the screen reconfigures into the workers of the world uniting [and fighting back] in District 12. How could Marx’s own rendition have gotten things so wrong?
Always that same gap between the potential to explore these things intelligently but going instead for the cheap [and oh so predictable] thrills. After all, the whole thing is basically rigged by the folks behind the curtains. Which [of course] they barely scratch the surface regarding.
Jennifer Lawrence was paid what was, for her, the high fee of $500,000. It took her three days before she accepted the role because she was unsure how the role would clearly affect her career, since her background was largely on the indie film circuit. For The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013), she was paid $10 million, 20 times more than the initial offer.
Panem is located in a post-apocalyptic North America whose land mass has been reduced by rising sea levels. It is generally agreed that the Capitol is in the Rocky Mountains, possibly Colorado, and that the District 12 town where Katniss grew up is somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains, possibly Kentucky or West Virginia.
Although it is mentioned briefly that Gale has had his name put into the drawing multiple times, it is not fully explained in the movie why someone might want to do this other than when Katniss tells Prim when she comes to say goodbye not to put her name in more because it’s not worth getting enough food. Each additional time a name is entered raises the possibility that the person will be selected to compete, and probably die, in the games. In the source novel, it is explained that putting your name in an additional time garners your family an additional portion of grain and oil, so families experiencing especially terrible privation may put their children’s names into the drawing more than once in exchange for that small amount of extra food.
Body Count: 39. (17 from a flashback)
In the early scenes depicting life in District 12, an homage to Dorothea Lange’s iconic Depression-era photo is seen in the shot of the lady looking out the window with her fingers on one cheek. Later in the film, the Reaping scene features images of the same grand neo-classical architecture, '40s style microphones, and red birds of prey banners that were all part of the Third Reich. IMDb
The Hunger Games
Seneca: I think it’s our tradition…It comes out of a particularly painful part of our history. But it’s been a way we’ve been able to heal. At first it was a reminder of the rebellion. It was the price the Districts had to pay. But I think it has grown from that. I think it's a…It's something that knits us all together.
The MAGA mentality, let's say.
President Snow [voiceover]: War, terrible war. Widows, orphans, a motherless child. This was the uprising that rocked our land. Thirteen districts rebelled against the country that fed them, loved them, protected them. Brother turned on brother until nothing remained. And then came the peace, hard fought, sorely won. A people rose up from the ashes and a new era was born. But freedom has a cost. When the traitors were defeated, we swore as a nation we would never know this treason again. And so it was decreed that, each year, the various districts of Panem would offer up, in tribute, one young man and woman to fight to the death in a pageant of honor, courage and sacrifice. The lone victor, bathed in riches, would serve as a reminder of our generosity and our forgiveness. This is how we remember our past. This is how we safeguard our future.
Since everything has to be rationalized, everything will be.
Gale: What if they did? Just one year. What if everyone just stopped watching?
Katniss: But they won’t, Gale.
Gale: What if they did? What if we did?
Katniss: Won’t happen.
Gale: You root for your favorite, you cry when they get killed. It’s sick.
Katniss: Gale.
Gale: No one watches and they don’t have a game. It’s as simple as that. What?
Katniss: Nothing.
Gale: Fine. Laugh at me.
Katniss: I’m not laughing at you!
Snickering perhaps?
Gale: We could do it, you know? Take off. Live in the woods. It’s what we do anyway.
Katniss: They’d catch us.
Gale: Maybe not.
Katniss: Cut out our tongues or worse. We wouldn’t make it five miles.
How far did you make it?
Gale: Listen to me. You’re stronger than they are. You are. Get to a bow.
Katniss: They may not have one…
Gale: They will if you show 'em how good you are. They just want a good show. That’s all they want. If they don’t have a bow, then you make one, okay? You know how to hunt.
Katniss: Animals.
Gale: It’s no different, Katniss.
In part because we are, after all, animals ourselves.
Peeta: You’re our mentor, you’re supposed to go…Our mentor is supposed to tell us how to get sponsors and give us advice.
Haymitch: Oh, okay. Ummm…Embrace the probability of your imminent death, and know in your heart that there’s nothing I can do to save you.
Any inninent deaths here?
Haymitch: You really wanna know how to stay alive? You get people to like you. In the middle of the games when you’re starving or freezing, some water, a knife or even some matches can mean the difference between life and death. And those things only come from Sponsors. And to get Sponsors, you have to make people like you. And right now, sweetheart, you’re not off to a really good start.
Sponsors? Take a wild guess.
Haymitch [about Cato]: He’s a Career. You know what that is?
Katniss: From District 1.
Haymitch: And 2. They train in a special academy until they’re eighteen, then they volunteer. By that point, they’re pretty lethal.
So, any dope scandals to speak of?
Peeta [to Katniss]: I have no chance of winning. None! Alright? It’s true. Everybody knows it. You know what my mother said? She said, “District 12 might finally have a winner!” But she wasn’t talking about me. She was talking about you.
Thanks, Mom.
Haymitch [to Katniss and Peeta]: I don’t know how else to put this: Make sure they remember you.
And the equivalent of that here?
President Snow: Seneca… why do you think we have a winner?
Seneca [frowns]: What do you mean?
President Snow: I mean, why do we have a winner? I mean, if we just wanted to intimidate the districts, why not round up twenty-four of them at random and execute them all at once? Be a lot faster.
[Seneca just stares, confused]
President Snow: Hope.
Seneca: Hope?
President Snow: Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it’s contained.
Seneca: So…?
President Snow: So, CONTAIN it.
Hell, that still works in our own day and age, right? And with the usual cynical treachery in tow.
Katniss: Where’s Peeta?
Haymitch: He’s in his room. Now listen…Tomorrow’s the last day. When they let us walk with our own Tributes right before the game so you and I will be going down at 9.
Katniss: Well, what about him?
Haymitch: No, he says he wants to be trained on his own from now on.
Katniss: What?
Haymitch: This kind of thing does happen at this point. After all, there’s only one winner. Right?
Big Brother!
Katniss: He made me look weak.
Haymitch: He made you look desirable, which, in your case, can’t hurt, sweetheart.
If you get his drift? Though it's not likely you'll miss it.
Haymitch [referring to Katniss and Peeta]: Now, I can sell the star-crossed lovers from District 12.
Katniss: We are NOT star-crossed lovers.
Haymitch: It’s a television show, and being in love with that boy might just get you sponsors which could save your damn life.
Anyone here willing to sponsor me?
Katniss: Listen to them.
Peeta: Yeah. I just don’t want them to change me.
Katniss: How will they change you?
Peeta: I don’t know. Turn me into something I’m not. I-I-I just don’t want to be another piece in their game, you know?
Katniss: You mean you won’t kill anyone?
Peeta: No…I mean, you know, I’m sure I would be just like anybody else when the time comes, but I just keep wishing I could think of a way to show them that they don’t own me. You know, if I’m gonna die, I wanna still be me. Does that make any sense?
Katniss: Yeah. I just can’t afford to think like that. I have my sister.
Ask me if it makes sense.
Haymitch: There is a lot of anger out there. I know you know how to handle a mob, you’ve done it before. If you can’t scare them. Give them something to root for.
Seneca: Such as?
Haymitch: Young love.
Just out of curiosity, what do we root for here?
President Snow: So you like an underdog.
Seneca: Everyone likes an underdog.
President Snow: I don’t. Have you been out there—districts 10, 11, 12?
Seneca: Uh…Not personally, no!
President Snow: I have. Lots of underdogs. Lots of coal too. They grow crops. Minerals. Things we need. There are lots of underdogs. And I think if you could see them. You would not root for them either. I like you. But be careful.
The postmodern class struggle?
Voice over loudspeaker: Attention. Attention Tributes. There has been a slight rule change. The previous provision allowing for two victors from the same district has been revoked. Only one victor maybe crowned. Goodluck. And may the odds be ever in your favor.
Gasp! Who’d have thunk it?!
Haymitch: They’re not happy with you.
Katniss: Why, 'cause I didn’t die?
Nope. It’s more like two hicks from the sticks making fools of the ruling class. True love triumphs. To be continued.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Hell
“The path to paradise begins in Hell.” Dante Alighieri
Doesn't surprise me.
“I told him I believed in Hell, and that certain people, like me, had to live in Hell before they died, to make up for missing out on it after death, since they didn't believe in life after death, and what each person believed happened to him when he died.” Sylvia Plath
On the other hand, what if it's true?
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Dante Alighieri
Next up: the equivalent of that virtually?
“I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to Hell in his own way.” Robert Frost
And how comforting is that?
“All right, then, I'll go to Hell.” Mark Twain
I guess we'll never know. For now.
“Hell isn't other people. Hell is yourself." Ludwig Wittgenstein
I'll go out on a limb here and suggest it's both.
“The path to paradise begins in Hell.” Dante Alighieri
Doesn't surprise me.
“I told him I believed in Hell, and that certain people, like me, had to live in Hell before they died, to make up for missing out on it after death, since they didn't believe in life after death, and what each person believed happened to him when he died.” Sylvia Plath
On the other hand, what if it's true?
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Dante Alighieri
Next up: the equivalent of that virtually?
“I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to Hell in his own way.” Robert Frost
And how comforting is that?
“All right, then, I'll go to Hell.” Mark Twain
I guess we'll never know. For now.
“Hell isn't other people. Hell is yourself." Ludwig Wittgenstein
I'll go out on a limb here and suggest it's both.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Stupidity
“Policy is a narrative based on the gullibility of those to whom it will be presented as assumed by the gullibility of those doing the presenting.” Craig D. Lounsbrough
Trump, MAGA, ANON. To cite just a few.
“If you have managed to fool others, that is an art. But if you are fooling yourself, that is just stupidity.” Pranab Jyoti Borah
Or, sure, objectivism.
“I'm certain that the Cesare Borgia who existed was banal and stupid. He must have been, because to exist is always stupid and banal.” Fernando Pessoa
I'll go that far sometimes.
“A man can easily be stupid without being evil, but never, in even the most profound genius, is a man evil without in some way being stupid.” Criss Jami
Their evil, right, not ours.
“English words evolve a lot slower than stupidity.” Anthony T. Hincks
That can't be good.
Uh, right?
"A fool will always speak his mind.” Anthony T. Hincks
Like me posting here?
“Policy is a narrative based on the gullibility of those to whom it will be presented as assumed by the gullibility of those doing the presenting.” Craig D. Lounsbrough
Trump, MAGA, ANON. To cite just a few.
“If you have managed to fool others, that is an art. But if you are fooling yourself, that is just stupidity.” Pranab Jyoti Borah
Or, sure, objectivism.
“I'm certain that the Cesare Borgia who existed was banal and stupid. He must have been, because to exist is always stupid and banal.” Fernando Pessoa
I'll go that far sometimes.
“A man can easily be stupid without being evil, but never, in even the most profound genius, is a man evil without in some way being stupid.” Criss Jami
Their evil, right, not ours.
“English words evolve a lot slower than stupidity.” Anthony T. Hincks
That can't be good.
Uh, right?
"A fool will always speak his mind.” Anthony T. Hincks
Like me posting here?
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Artificial Intelligence
“As more and more artificial intelligence is entering into the world, more and more emotional intelligence must enter into leadership.” Amit Ray
Emotional intelligence?
“The five phases of Artificial Intelligence (AI 5.0) are Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), Artificial Consciousness, Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) and Compassionate Artificial Superintelligence (CAS).” Amit Ray
You know, just for the record.
“What use was time to those who'd soon achieve Digital Immortality?” Clyde Dsouza
They'll think of something?
“To be human is to be 'a' human, a specific person with a life history and idiosyncrasy and point of view; artificial intelligence suggests that the line between intelligent machines and people blurs most when a puree is made of that identity.” Brian Christian
Next up: a fractured and fragmented robot?
"A powerful AI system tasked with ensuring your safety might imprison you at home. If you asked for happiness, it might hook you up to a life support and ceaselessly stimulate your brain's pleasure centers. If you don't provide the AI with a very big library of preferred behaviors or an ironclad means for it to deduce what behavior you prefer, you'll be stuck with whatever it comes up with. And since it's a highly complex system, you may never understand it well enough to make sure you've got it right.” James Barrat
As if existence wasn't already problematic enough.
“Though I may be constructed," he said, "so too were you. I in a factory; you in a womb. Neither of us asked for this, but we were given it. Self-awareness is a gift. And it is a gift no thinking thing has any right to deny another. No thinking thing should be another thing's property, to be turned on and off when it is convenient." C. Robert Cargill
Yeah, what about that?
“As more and more artificial intelligence is entering into the world, more and more emotional intelligence must enter into leadership.” Amit Ray
Emotional intelligence?
“The five phases of Artificial Intelligence (AI 5.0) are Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), Artificial Consciousness, Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) and Compassionate Artificial Superintelligence (CAS).” Amit Ray
You know, just for the record.
“What use was time to those who'd soon achieve Digital Immortality?” Clyde Dsouza
They'll think of something?
“To be human is to be 'a' human, a specific person with a life history and idiosyncrasy and point of view; artificial intelligence suggests that the line between intelligent machines and people blurs most when a puree is made of that identity.” Brian Christian
Next up: a fractured and fragmented robot?
"A powerful AI system tasked with ensuring your safety might imprison you at home. If you asked for happiness, it might hook you up to a life support and ceaselessly stimulate your brain's pleasure centers. If you don't provide the AI with a very big library of preferred behaviors or an ironclad means for it to deduce what behavior you prefer, you'll be stuck with whatever it comes up with. And since it's a highly complex system, you may never understand it well enough to make sure you've got it right.” James Barrat
As if existence wasn't already problematic enough.
“Though I may be constructed," he said, "so too were you. I in a factory; you in a womb. Neither of us asked for this, but we were given it. Self-awareness is a gift. And it is a gift no thinking thing has any right to deny another. No thinking thing should be another thing's property, to be turned on and off when it is convenient." C. Robert Cargill
Yeah, what about that?
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Free Will
“Experts in ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn't see their thoughts as belonging to them. When ancient Greeks had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was telling them to fall in love. Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy, but now they call this free will.
At least the ancient Greeks were being honest.” Chuck Palahniuk
New thread? New forum?
“According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it.” G.K. Chesterton
Wow, he thought, why didn't I think of that?!"
“My message to you is this: pretend that you have free will. It's essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don't. The reality isn't important: what's important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.” Ted Chiang
Unless, perhaps, the pretense itself is just another inherent manifestation of the only possible reality.
“You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.” Sam Harris
Blah, blah, blah?
“The fuck is this shit?" it says. "Can you bloody believe this shit?" "No, honey," I say. "This is absolutely ridiculous." "Aren't you pissed the fuck off?" "Someone really should do something about this." "Why don't we bloody do something about it?" "Yeah, why don't we?" I say. "But how." "Well, we find whatever p**** is in charge and give the fucker a piece of our minds, of course." Adam Scott Huerta
Try this yourself.
“What people have the capacity to choose, they have the ability to change.” Madeleine Albright
My guess: for better or for a lot worse.
“Experts in ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn't see their thoughts as belonging to them. When ancient Greeks had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was telling them to fall in love. Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy, but now they call this free will.
At least the ancient Greeks were being honest.” Chuck Palahniuk
New thread? New forum?
“According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it.” G.K. Chesterton
Wow, he thought, why didn't I think of that?!"
“My message to you is this: pretend that you have free will. It's essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don't. The reality isn't important: what's important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.” Ted Chiang
Unless, perhaps, the pretense itself is just another inherent manifestation of the only possible reality.
“You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.” Sam Harris
Blah, blah, blah?
“The fuck is this shit?" it says. "Can you bloody believe this shit?" "No, honey," I say. "This is absolutely ridiculous." "Aren't you pissed the fuck off?" "Someone really should do something about this." "Why don't we bloody do something about it?" "Yeah, why don't we?" I say. "But how." "Well, we find whatever p**** is in charge and give the fucker a piece of our minds, of course." Adam Scott Huerta
Try this yourself.
“What people have the capacity to choose, they have the ability to change.” Madeleine Albright
My guess: for better or for a lot worse.
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Heaven
“Maybe Heaven will be a library. Then I will be able to finish my to-read list.” Kellie Elmore
Right.
“Few religions are definite about the size of Heaven, but on the planet Earth the Book of Revelation (ch. XXI, v.16) gives it as a cube 12,000 furlongs on a side. This is somewhat less than 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic feet. Even allowing that the Heavenly Host and other essential services take up at least two thirds of this space, this leaves about one million cubic feet of space for each human occupant- assuming that every creature that could be called ‘human’ is allowed in, and the the human race eventually totals a thousand times the numbers of humans alive up until now. This is such a generous amount of space that it suggests that room has also been provided for some alien races or - a happy thought - that pets are allowed.” Terry Pratchett
Right.
“I believe that everything that you do bad comes back to you. So everything that I do that's bad, I'm going to suffer from it. But in my mind, I believe what I'm doing is right. So I feel like I'm going to heaven” Tupac Shakur
See how easy it is?
“The clear awareness of having been born into a losing struggle need not lead one into despair. I do not especially like the idea that one day I shall be tapped on the shoulder and informed, not that the party is over but that it is most assuredly going on—only henceforth in my absence. (It's the second of those thoughts: the edition of the newspaper that will come out on the day after I have gone, that is the more distressing.) Much more horrible, though, would be the announcement that the party was continuing forever, and that I was forbidden to leave. Whether it was a hellishly bad party or a party that was perfectly heavenly in every respect, the moment that it became eternal and compulsory would be the precise moment that it began to pall.” Christopher Hitchens
Does anyone actually believe boasts of this sort?
“I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.” Isaac Asimov
I guess he knows by now.
“Our heaven is their hell, said God. I like a balanced universe.” Margaret Atwood
Well, at least He does exist.
“Maybe Heaven will be a library. Then I will be able to finish my to-read list.” Kellie Elmore
Right.
“Few religions are definite about the size of Heaven, but on the planet Earth the Book of Revelation (ch. XXI, v.16) gives it as a cube 12,000 furlongs on a side. This is somewhat less than 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic feet. Even allowing that the Heavenly Host and other essential services take up at least two thirds of this space, this leaves about one million cubic feet of space for each human occupant- assuming that every creature that could be called ‘human’ is allowed in, and the the human race eventually totals a thousand times the numbers of humans alive up until now. This is such a generous amount of space that it suggests that room has also been provided for some alien races or - a happy thought - that pets are allowed.” Terry Pratchett
Right.
“I believe that everything that you do bad comes back to you. So everything that I do that's bad, I'm going to suffer from it. But in my mind, I believe what I'm doing is right. So I feel like I'm going to heaven” Tupac Shakur
See how easy it is?
“The clear awareness of having been born into a losing struggle need not lead one into despair. I do not especially like the idea that one day I shall be tapped on the shoulder and informed, not that the party is over but that it is most assuredly going on—only henceforth in my absence. (It's the second of those thoughts: the edition of the newspaper that will come out on the day after I have gone, that is the more distressing.) Much more horrible, though, would be the announcement that the party was continuing forever, and that I was forbidden to leave. Whether it was a hellishly bad party or a party that was perfectly heavenly in every respect, the moment that it became eternal and compulsory would be the precise moment that it began to pall.” Christopher Hitchens
Does anyone actually believe boasts of this sort?
“I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.” Isaac Asimov
I guess he knows by now.
“Our heaven is their hell, said God. I like a balanced universe.” Margaret Atwood
Well, at least He does exist.
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Hypocrisy
“When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch.”Bette Davis
Let's watch for that here.
“One thing you can't hide - is when you're crippled inside.” John Lennon
So, how am I doing here hiding mine?
“As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.” Virginia Woolf
Just not the other way around, he suspected.
“A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding, or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with his pen.” Virginia Woolf
Drinks her tea?
“We are all hypocrites. We cannot see ourselves or judge ourselves the way we see and judge others.” José Emilio Pacheco
And how much more problematic can that be.
“I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It's still my symbol of rebellion -- against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others' ideas.” Johnny Cash
What's he wearing now, though?
“When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch.”Bette Davis
Let's watch for that here.
“One thing you can't hide - is when you're crippled inside.” John Lennon
So, how am I doing here hiding mine?
“As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.” Virginia Woolf
Just not the other way around, he suspected.
“A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding, or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with his pen.” Virginia Woolf
Drinks her tea?
“We are all hypocrites. We cannot see ourselves or judge ourselves the way we see and judge others.” José Emilio Pacheco
And how much more problematic can that be.
“I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It's still my symbol of rebellion -- against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others' ideas.” Johnny Cash
What's he wearing now, though?
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Determinism
“Could you do things out of order and end up at the same place?” Liane Moriarty
And what place might that be?
“It was a random meeting that changed all that, although for a Surrealist like Prim, as I later discovered, nothing in the world is ever truly random. She believed the events that seemed to be chance are actually preordained by the subconscious; the people and objects we encounter are embodiment of our inner desires, waiting to be discovered.” Joanna Moorhead
That certainly settles some things, right?
"The future unfolds in cascades of causes and choices. That is the Best Fit Theory, realizing what will happen next.” Pusp Raj Bhatt
In other words, to click or not to click.
“You know, I have always believed that humans do have some amount of free will. Of course, this free will is absent if your bladder is full or if you want to rush to the toilet to have a dump. But once things are normal, a certain amount of leeway does exist.” Abhaidev
Anyone here know how much?
“Our interests in life are not always served by viewing people and things as collections of atoms—but this doesn’t negate the truth or utility of physics.” Sam Harris
Let's just assume that some of us have more quarks than others.
“The conviction that a law of necessity governs human activities introduces into our conception of man and life a mildness, a reverence and an excellence, such as would be unattainable without this conviction.” Albert Einstein
Never even came close myself to whatever that means.
“Could you do things out of order and end up at the same place?” Liane Moriarty
And what place might that be?
“It was a random meeting that changed all that, although for a Surrealist like Prim, as I later discovered, nothing in the world is ever truly random. She believed the events that seemed to be chance are actually preordained by the subconscious; the people and objects we encounter are embodiment of our inner desires, waiting to be discovered.” Joanna Moorhead
That certainly settles some things, right?
"The future unfolds in cascades of causes and choices. That is the Best Fit Theory, realizing what will happen next.” Pusp Raj Bhatt
In other words, to click or not to click.
“You know, I have always believed that humans do have some amount of free will. Of course, this free will is absent if your bladder is full or if you want to rush to the toilet to have a dump. But once things are normal, a certain amount of leeway does exist.” Abhaidev
Anyone here know how much?
“Our interests in life are not always served by viewing people and things as collections of atoms—but this doesn’t negate the truth or utility of physics.” Sam Harris
Let's just assume that some of us have more quarks than others.
“The conviction that a law of necessity governs human activities introduces into our conception of man and life a mildness, a reverence and an excellence, such as would be unattainable without this conviction.” Albert Einstein
Never even came close myself to whatever that means.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Suicide
“I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away — yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth's orbit ——————————— and wanted to shoot myself.” Søren Kierkegaard
Again, in other words.
“The girls took into their own hands decisions better left to God. They became too powerful to live among us, too self-concerned, too visionary, too blind.” Jeffrey Eugenides
And virgins no less.
In my view, suicide is not really a wish for life to end.
What is it then?'
It is the only way a powerless person can find to make everybody else look away from his shame. The wish is not to die, but to hide.” Orson Scott Card
Right, and every single one of them.
“When people are suicidal, their thinking is paralyzed, their options appear spare or nonexistent, their mood is despairing, and hopelessness permeates their entire mental domain. The future cannot be separated from the present, and the present is painful beyond solace. 'This is my last experiment,' wrote a young chemist in his suicide note. 'If there is any eternal torment worse than mine I’ll have to be shown.' Kay Redfield Jamison
I guess we'll never know.
“I can't deceive myself that out of the bare stark realization that no matter how enthusiastic you are, no matter how sure that character is fate, nothing is real, past or future, when you are alone in your room with the clock ticking loudly into the false cheerful brilliance of the electric light. And if you have no past or future which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide.” Sylvia Plath
What, you think virtual reality changes that?
“Depression is a painfully slow, crashing death. Mania is the other extreme, a wild roller coaster run off its tracks, an eight ball of coke cut with speed. It's fun and it's frightening as hell. Some patients - bipolar type I - experience both extremes; other - bipolar type II - suffer depression almost exclusively. But the "mixed state," the mercurial churning of both high and low, is the most dangerous, the most deadly. Suicide too often results from the impulsive nature and physical speed of psychotic mania coupled with depression's paranoid self-loathing.” David Lovelace
Start here: https://youtu.be/D5RlVGZCNZU?si=H6L53hsmsTlYUnlU
“I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away — yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth's orbit ——————————— and wanted to shoot myself.” Søren Kierkegaard
Again, in other words.
“The girls took into their own hands decisions better left to God. They became too powerful to live among us, too self-concerned, too visionary, too blind.” Jeffrey Eugenides
And virgins no less.
In my view, suicide is not really a wish for life to end.
What is it then?'
It is the only way a powerless person can find to make everybody else look away from his shame. The wish is not to die, but to hide.” Orson Scott Card
Right, and every single one of them.
“When people are suicidal, their thinking is paralyzed, their options appear spare or nonexistent, their mood is despairing, and hopelessness permeates their entire mental domain. The future cannot be separated from the present, and the present is painful beyond solace. 'This is my last experiment,' wrote a young chemist in his suicide note. 'If there is any eternal torment worse than mine I’ll have to be shown.' Kay Redfield Jamison
I guess we'll never know.
“I can't deceive myself that out of the bare stark realization that no matter how enthusiastic you are, no matter how sure that character is fate, nothing is real, past or future, when you are alone in your room with the clock ticking loudly into the false cheerful brilliance of the electric light. And if you have no past or future which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide.” Sylvia Plath
What, you think virtual reality changes that?
“Depression is a painfully slow, crashing death. Mania is the other extreme, a wild roller coaster run off its tracks, an eight ball of coke cut with speed. It's fun and it's frightening as hell. Some patients - bipolar type I - experience both extremes; other - bipolar type II - suffer depression almost exclusively. But the "mixed state," the mercurial churning of both high and low, is the most dangerous, the most deadly. Suicide too often results from the impulsive nature and physical speed of psychotic mania coupled with depression's paranoid self-loathing.” David Lovelace
Start here: https://youtu.be/D5RlVGZCNZU?si=H6L53hsmsTlYUnlU