Philosophy Now Forum

Ottessa Moshfegh from My Year of Rest and Relaxation

The art world had turned out to be like the stock market, a reflection of political trends and the persuasions of capitalism, fueled by greed and gossip and cocaine.

Who could have predicted that?!

Mind over matter, people say. But what is matter, anyway? When you look at it under a microscope, it's just tiny bits of stuff. Atomic particles. Sub-atomic particles. Look deeper and deeper and eventually you'll find nothing. We're mostly empty space. We're mostly nothing. Tra-la-la. And we're all the same nothingness. You and me, just filling the space with nothingness. We could walk through walls if we put our minds to it, people say. What they don't mention is that walking through a wall would most likely kill you. Don't forget that.

Click, of course.

This was how I knew the sleep was having an effect: I was growing less and less attached to life. If I kept going, I thought, I'd disappear completely, then reappear in some new form. This was my hope. This was the dream.

In other words, dream on.

Her loyalty was absurd. This was what kept us going.

If only all the way to the grave.

I trusted that everything was going to work out fine as long as I could sleep all day.

Not to mention all night, of course.

We probably shouldn't be friends, I told her, stretching out on the sofa. I've been thinking about it, and I see no reason to continue.

Another one bites the dust.

There are only so many directions we can go. And one of them is down. And sometimes you go so far down you get desparate. And when you get desparate you’ll do all sorts of desparate things in order to get back up. Or even just to be less far down. And that [more likely than not] is when the law of unintended consequences can kick in. Really kick in.

Like you kidnapping a boy north of the border who is in turned kidnapped from you by others south of the border.

What’s crucial is that you have some understanding of what it is like to be around someone who drinks all the time. Their thinking is not always clear. And the only way they can get through the tough parts is through the bottle. But it is precisely when times are tough that you need you be the most clear-headed.

Here though you’re just thankful she isn’t a monster. Lots of them out there are. Instead, she experiences something that helps to transform her into something she clearly was not when the narrative begins. But that part never really goes away. So, for all pratical purposes, she has become two different people


Julia

Elena: You know, the people here, they’re really nice to each other. You can feel safe here. And we can help you. I know you. You live right across from me, we’re neighbors.
Julia: Well, I’m not really down with the good neighbor shit.

She'll come around.

Mitch [to Julia]: I’d like to tell you something here. If you’re not careful, you could lose it all in one night-- in one bad night. I’ll tell you about the old Mitch, okay? The old Mitch, who was a real fucking drinker, could drink you under the table any fucking day of the week, believe me. A disaster for my family, but I didn’t give a fuck. And one bad night one of my kids gets in the way. And I just-- I just wanted to push her, but that’s not what I did. What I did is I hit her. All this rage came out of me. I wanted to do some real fucking damage. My fist came down on her. She just went-- What is she, eight years old? Skinny little arms-- she went flying against that wall. She dropped right there, not breathing. My wife goes running over to her, picks her up, takes her to the hospital. Saved her life–my little Lucy. You know what I did? I went in there and I went to sleep. Passed out. Just another night. 13 years–haven’t seen them since.

What's not to believe?

Julia: It’s simple, Nick. Okay, listen here. I go with her to kidnap the kid. I get the kid. Sweet, okay. And then – here’s the kicker – we kidnap the kid from her!

Again, she's desparate.

Julia: Elena, are you saying that you don’t have the money now yourself?
Elena: Well, money doesn’t matter. I don’t have the money, okay? I don’t have any money. He has all the money. He’s gonna give it and God’s with us.
Julia: God’s with us? God’s with us and you don’t have the money?!
Elena: No, I don’t have it, but…
Julia: I owe that money! That’s my money, you fucking psycho!
[Julia slaps her across the face]
Elena: My baby! Even an animal keeps its babies. Even a bitch keeps its babies. Help me! Somebody help-- help me!

The plot...thickens.

Julia: The fucking cops were there! I saw them, you fucking bastard. Liar! I saw them.
Grandfather: The money was dropped. I did my part, now where is Tom?
Julia: You don’t give a shit about seeing your kid again.
Grandfather: Julia Harris, we know who you are. We’ll pay, but I want Tom. If you lay a hand on him, you are fucking dead!

The plot...sickens

Mitch: Is the boy all right?
Julia: Yeah, he’s fine.
Mitch: Just don’t hurt him.
Julia: Don’t hurt him? Is that what you think of me, Mitch? And I suppose you-- I suppose that’s what you told him, right? That I’m some-- what? alcoholic degenerate moron?
Mitch: No, that’s what he thought before I talked to him.

Oh...

Julia: You know what is going to be the first thing they do when they get that kid back? They’re gonna come looking for me. And they’re gonna find me And they’re gonna fucking crucify me. I am fighting for my skin here, Mitch, and I am dead without that money.

Money, again.

Mitch: We all knew that Elena’s stupid insane story about getting her kid back was bullshit. We heard it over and over again at meetings. Why is it that you are the only one who believed her? Why? You’re dangerous to this kid, Julia, because you’re a danger to yourself.

She is truly as fucked up as he thinks she is. But is she also a moral monster?

Santos: I will feed that fucking kid’s face to my dog.
Julia: I’m not the mother, asshole. Right? I don’t give a flying fuck what you do to him. You’re not the one who kidnapped that kid, Santos. Let me tell you: I did. Yeah, take it in. You didn’t ask the family for a ransom. I did! You know for how much? $2 million. Oh yeah. Today you lose, I win. ¿Entiendes, fuckface? Here’s my deal: You get exactly half. I’ll do the math for you-- that is $1 million. Okay? When I get the kid back.
Santos: I can’t believe this.
Julia: Read The L.A. Times, you stupid shit. My fucking face is all over it. You don’t know who I am? I’m Julia Harris. I kidnapped that little shit. And I need a gun.

Maybe even a bazooka.

Julia [to Tom]: I’m taking you to your mother.

Thus redeeming herself. Sort of.

Meaning

“Truth is born into this world only with pangs and tribulations, and every fresh truth is received unwillingly.” Alfred Russel Wallace

Mine in particular.

What does this beauty or this music mean to you? You cannot see the waves rolling up the beach or hear their roar. What do they mean to you?' In the most evident sense they mean everything. I cannot fathom or define their meaning any more than I can fathom or define love or religion or goodness.” Helen Keller

Whatever that means when, say, you can see and hear?

“Dignity has no price, when someone starts making small concessions, in the end, life loses all meaning.” José Saramago

Like the alternatives aren't even worse.

“Vimes took the view that life was so full of things happening erratically in all directions that the chances of any of them making some kind of relevant sense were remote in the extreme." Terry Pratchett

Let's run this by Benjamin Button.

“The closer and more completely you can come to explaining what a work of art means, the less like art it seems.” Laura Miller

And here, he suspected, the more abstract the better.

“For the human experience, life in the natural world seems to require the application of meaning, in order to evoke purpose.” T.F. Hodge

Millions and millions of them so far.

Gee, this is original:

The futuristic society depicted is one where separation of church and state no longer exists. Citizens have been drug-induced, then controlled by the government who gives their authority as coming from an imagined higher being. The society is free from worry, fear, want, or sadness… however, it is also a society that is void, sterile, lacking creativity, sex, love, and emotion.

Or maybe not?

After all, in most dystopias [of the totalitarian, communist ilk] God is displaced by the soulless State. But otherwise these are generally the same trade offs, right? The rugged individual is more inclined to risk the worry, want, fear and sadness in order to be able to create her own world on her own terms. All the rest of us will settle for the nanny state. The mentality of the strong vs the mentality of the weak. As though complex human interaction is able to be reduced down to this.

Besides, what one person construes to be a sterile environment another deems to be clean.

Some years ago I had imagined scenarios such as this to be highly improbable. Now with technologies that simply boggle the mind I find myself becoming more and more convinced they are inevitable. Big Brother really is looming larger and larger with each passing year. It is only a matter of waiting for a calamity big enough to set it all in motion.

In the end though he gets…free. And we have absolutely no idea what that means. Only that it all seems rather bleak out in this particular world.

IMDb

George Lucas apparently named the film after his San Francisco telephone number, 849 1138 - the letters THX correspond to letters found on the buttons 8, 4 and 9.

To provide the large number of extras required, George Lucas contacted the Synanon drug rehabilitation facility. He found many recovering drug users who were required to be shaved bald for the drug program anyway.

Some of SEN’s dialogue is taken from speeches by Richard Nixon.

The sounds of the police motorcycles are the sped-up sounds of women screaming together in a tiled bathroom.


THX 1138

[repeated line]
Robotic Voice-Over: Are you now, or have you ever been?

Just out of curiosity, are you now, or have you ever been yourself?

Female voice: What’s wrong?
Man on monitor: I just bought one of these yesterday, and it doesn’t fit my consumer, and the store doesn’t have any of the other kind.
[LUH presses a button]
Male voice: For more enjoyment and greater efficiency, consumption is being standardized.

Cue, let's say, the deepest state of them all.

Female voice (medicine cabinet): If you feel you are not properly sedated, call 348-844 immediately. Failure to do so may result in prosecution for criminal drug evasion.

Get it?

OMM [to THX 1138 in “confession”]: Thou art a subject of the divine, created in the image of man, by the masses, for the masses. Let us be thankful we have an occupation to fill. Work hard, increase production, prevent accidents and be happy.

Oh, and don't forget to vote!

OMM: Let us be thankful we have commerce. Buy more. Buy more now. Buy. And be happy.

You know, if you can actually afford to.

[hologram plays in background while THX looks for LUH]
Hologram: Combined with economic advantages of the mating structure, it far surpasses any disadvantages in increased perversions. A final tran - An infinite translated mathematics of tolerance and charity among artificial memory devices is ultimately binary. Stimulating rhetoric…
THX 1138: LUH?
Hologram: …absolute. The theater of noise is proof of our potential. The circulation of autotypes. The golden talisman underfoot is phenomenon approaching. And, in the history of now, all ethos are designed.

Designed by who, he wondered.

Trial Prosecutor: Economics must not dictate situations which are obviously religious.

When you can tell the two apart, of course.

SRT: Well, maybe you are right. Maybe there’s something wrong with the computer. I don’t know, it’s a strange life. Cybernetics, genetics, lasers and all those things. I guess I’ll never understand any of that stuff. Guess maybe holograms are not supposed to.

Cue the holograms here.

SEN: You know, when I was at school, it was all very different. We used to stay in bed all the time. Combined primary economics… Combined primary economics was a bottle about this big.
[holds hands two feet apart]
SEN: Took a week.
Child: Wow!

Cue the children here.

Female voice [over P.A.]: Changeable. Alterable. Mutable. Variable. Versatile. Moldable. Movable. Fluctuate. Undulate. Flicker. Flutter. Pulsate. Vibrate. Alternate. Plastic.

Well, click, of course.

[THX’s case has been terminated…it’s overbudget]
Chrome Robot: Please come back. You have nothing to be afraid of. We have to go back. This is your last chance to return with us. You have nowhere to go. You cannot survive outside the city shell. We only want to help you. This is your last chance.

Would you go back if you could go back knowing you should go back?

John Fowles from The Magus

The thing I felt most clearly, when the first corner was turned, was that I had escaped. Obscurer, but no less strong, was the feeling that she loved me more than I loved her, and that consequently I had in some indefinable way won.

Unless, of course, he's wrong.

Liking other people is an illusion we have to cherish in ourselves if we are to live in society.

What's that make hating them, he wondered?

Because they died, we know we still live. Because a star explodes and a thousand worlds like ours die, we know this world is. That is the smile: that what might not be, is.

Lucky us?

One kind of person is engaged in society without realizing it; another kind engages in society by controlling it. The one is a gear, a cog, and the other an engineer, a driver. But a person who has opted out has only his ability to express his disengagement between his existence and nothingness.

See, didn't I tell you?

Long afterwards I realized why some men, racing drivers and their like, become addicted to speed. There are those of us who never see death ahead, but eternally behind: in any moment that stops and thinks.

Uh-oh!

Think what it would be like if you got back to your island and there was no old man, no girl anymore. No mysterious fun and games. The whole place locked up forever.

Of course, that can even happen here.

Controversy tended to surround this one.

Is he a pimp more or less than he’s a musician more or less than he’s an entrepreneur? Pimps, after all, make their living off prostitutes. And some are known to be particularly brutal and exploitative in this regard. And then there is the question of how black men are invariably portrayed cinematically “in the hood”.

As Wesley Morris, film critic of the Boston Globe noted: “Some will find it chicly inspired, recalling blaxploitation’s heyday with its grimy urban realism. Some will rightly find it corny, absurd, and an insultingly limited presentation of options for the most disenfranchised African-Americans.”

What some folks are looking for are the progressive characters to set the reactionaries straight. But what if “in reality” they don’t exist? What if it is just the “grimy urban realism” out there instead? Here the protagonist “evolves” though. He starts out little more than a thug and then begins to recognize there are other ways to relate to the women in his life. Still, Bill Cosby comes through loud and clear at times.

The power of music – of creating music – jumps right out at you here. There is just something about it that reaches deeper inside us than any other art form. Or it does for me. And [as some will insist] it doesn’t have to be classical or jazz either. The blues, rock and rap in particular trigger a whole other kind of subjunctive reaction to the world we live in.

Terrence Howard’s performance here is really beyond putting into words.

Look for Kyle.

The film is dedicated to Sam Phillips, the man who discovered Elvis Presley and founded Sun Records. Phillips’ do-it-yourself aesthetic inspired Craig Brewer to write the film.

Although there are numerous references to famous Memphis-based musicians in the film, Craig Brewer deliberately avoided any direct references to Elvis Presley. In an interview, Brewer said: “That was a rule. No Elvis.”

Terrence Howard interviewed 123 pimps and 78 prostitutes over a period of two and a half years. This process included living with four separate pimps for various periods, including a month-long stint in a Memphis bordello. IMDb


Hustle and Flow

Djay: See… man ain’t like a dog. And when I say “man,” I’m talking about man as in mankind, not man as in men. Because men, well, we a lot like a dog. You know, we like to piss on things. Sniff a bitch when we can. Even get a little pink hard-on the way they do. We territorial as shit, you know, we gonna protect our own. But man, he know about death. Got him a sense of history. Got religion. See… a dog, man, a dog don’t know shit about no birthdays or Christmas or Easter bunny, none of that shit. And one day God gonna come calling, so you know, they going through life carefree. But people like you and me, man, we always guessing. Wondering, “What if?” You know what I mean? So when you say to me, “Hey, I don’t think we should be doing this,” I gotta say, baby, I don’t think we should be doing this neither, but we ain’t gonna get no move on in this world, lying around in the sun, licking our ass all day. I mean, we man. I mean, you a woman and all, but we man. So with this said, you tell me what it is you wanna do with your life.

Next up: you tell me.

Djay [to john]: Look here, baby, it break down like this: Twenty in the front, forty in the back.

60 for both?

Nola: How come Lex gets to work out of that strip club, and I can’t?
Djay: Because we done been over this ten times, Nola. You got what they call a bad equilibrium. And it ain’t your fault, you just knock into shit. I put you on that stage in them heels, tricks gonna be yelling, “Timber.”
Nola: I’m in heels out here every day. You don’t see me fall down once…
Djay: Because you sitting, Nola. Ain’t that much of a fall to the floor.

Pimp logic?

Key: Look, man, I know you done learned a whole mess of shit hustling out on the street, right? Let me tell you what I learned while working on my job. There are two types of people: those that talk the talk and those that walk the walk. People who walk the walk sometimes talk the talk but most times they don’t talk at all, ‘cause they walkin’. Now, people who talk the talk, when it comes time for them to walk the walk, you know what they do? They talk people like me into walkin’ for them.

I'll walk yours if you'll walk mine. Of course, first you'll have to grow a pair.

Nola: Everybody else says my hair looks sexy.
Lex: And then they nut.

He wondered what that meant.

Djay: What’s all this shit again?
Key: Drink holders. Poor man’s soundproofing.

Let's try them here.

Djay: Who the fuck is this nigga, man?
Key: That’s Shelby, he plays piano in my church. I thought he could help us develop our sound.
Djay: You know he’s white, right?

I spotted that immediately.

Key: It’s just that we want radio play, right? You got a song called “Beat That Bitch,” they might hear that and think that’s degrading.
Shelby: But that’s if you’re calling a woman a bitch. This sounds like a tearing-the-club-up song.
Djay: Man, I ain’t trying to call no ho no bitch.
Shelby: Yeah, I mean, besides, most of the bitches I know are guys.
Key: Look, man, y’all preaching to the choir, all right?
Shelby: If you had to say something different, other than “beat that bitch,” what would you say?
Djay: I don’t know. Shit. Stuff like… “Stomp that ho.”

Of course, some might find that degrading too.

Nola: Don’t ever do that to me again, D.
Djay: What? I ain’t…
Nola: No, I ain’t some fucking cash machine, where you can get shit for free. I gotta have a say in what I do! I’m not gonna suck dick every time you come up short!

No one should have to, right?

Shug: I get like this because I’m pregnant and everything…but, you know, letting me sing on the…on the demo and everything like you do…well, it just… it made me feel real. Real special. And…I mean, I know y’all gonna be moving on and moving up and y’all gonna get real good people to sing, you know, back up for you and everything…but I just… D, I need you to know it meant the world to me. Thank you so much, D.

And here context can be everything.

Djay: Hey, Skinny! What the fuck happened to you, man?
Skinny: What the fuck did you just say?
Djay: I don’t mean no disrespect and all. I just remember when your first underground crunk hit the motherfucking streets, man, that shit flew through Memphis like a motherfucking typhoon. Y’all was there, man. Nigga couldn’t even walk halfway down the block without the pavement crumbling underneath his feet because some cat was bumping your shit out the back of his Caddy, man. We just miss you, Skinny, that’s all.

And how Ludacris is that?

Djay [pulling the cassette tape he gave Skinny up out of the toilet]: Skinny, man. Tell me this shit just fell out your pocket, man. Skinny? Hey, bitch. You tell me this shit fell out your pocket, man.
Skinny: Hey, hey, hey, man.
Djay: Hey, what, man?
Skinny: You know what you could do?
Djay: What can I do, man? You tell me what I can do, man.
Skinny: You can suck my dick, bitch.
Djay [shoving the tape in Skinny’s mouth]: Hey, bitch, why don’t you suck on this shit? Motherfucker!

You know, with so much at stake for him.

Djay: Hey, how’s Nola, man?
Key: Nola? Let me tell you something, man. That girl got a mode all her own. She hit the bricks running. For some reason, she got it stuck in her head that she was in charge. Man, she hit every shake joint, radio station in Memphis and then some. I don’t know how she did it. That girl got skills.

If skill is what you call it.

Quoted by Iambiguous:

John Fowles from The Magus

The thing I felt most clearly, when the first corner was turned, was that I had escaped. Obscurer, but no less strong, was the feeling that she loved me more than I loved her, and that consequently I had in some indefinable way won.

It's common knowledge that desire makes us dependent on others. That fact is a common trope for agape-love which too is that which makes us vulnerable.
Insofar as any individual activates agape-love that individual sacrifices selfish rewards.

Some good and true individuals are rightly famous but most are obscure and are forgotten as soon as their generation passes away or even sooner.

A really controversial film. Especially back then. Some being incensed by the graphic violence, some being incensed by the manner in which a rape scene is depicted: With the rapist apologizing and the woman saying “hold me, hold me”.

There are parts of the world many deem to be “civilized”. But they are still part of the world in which a man is either man’s man or he is [or can be] savagely ostracized by those who will bust a nut trying to prove to everyone that they most certainly are. Sometimes it can even drive a weaker man – a mathematician, say – to explode into just the sort of violence the manly men crave.

And the more deeply you become ensconced in the world of working-class provincials the more likely you will encounter this sort of thing. A lot more id floating about. And stupidity. And even in the 40 odd years since this film came out that hasn’t really changed much at all.

Let’s face it, some women are attracted to the “bad boys” more so than to the, uh, academic sorts. Maybe it’s scrambled up in the genes somehow. And maybe you can unlearn it if born and bred on the other side of the tracks. Or become…educated.

But we all draw a line in the dirt somewhere. And when the thugs cross it we either go to the “law” or we confront them ourselves. Which is the more “manly” thing to do? And which is more likely to bring on dire consequences?

The title comes from the Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu, who wrote, “Heaven and earth are not humane, and regard the people as straw dogs.”

In the scene where Dustin Hoffman’s character first enters the local pub, Sam Peckinpah was unhappy with the other actors’ reaction to this stranger entering their world. Eventually, he decided to do one take where Hoffman entered the scene without his trousers on. He got his reaction, and these are the shots shown in the final film.

According to the Peckinpah biography, “If They Move … Kill 'Em!,” about one-third of the viewers walked out of the movie’s first preview, presumably put off by its violence. IMDb

That was back then. Nowadays you can have this much violence before the opening credits end.


Straw Dogs

Tom: What I am, I am.

A man’s man!

Handyman: I hear it’s pretty rough in the States. Bombing, rioting, sniping, shooting the blacks? Can’t walk down the streets, they say. Was you involved in it, sir? I, mean did you take part? See anyone get knifed?
David: Just between commercials.

Well, that went right over his head.

David: What was so funny with them?
Amy: They just think you’re strange.
David: Why because I’m American?
Amy: No. No. Just strange.

Of course, aren't all mathematicians strange?

David: Why don’t you wear a bra?
Amy: Why should I?
David: You shouldn’t go around without one and not expect that sort to stare.
Amy: Look, if you could hammer a nail, Venner and Scutt wouldn’t be out there.

Well, that's true. But that's not what he heard of course.

David: I have a grant to study possible structures in stellar interiors and the implications regarding their radiation characteristics.
Reverend Hood: Radiation. That’s an unfortunate dispensation.
David: Surely is. Yes, indeed.
Reverend Hood: As long as it’s not another bomb.
[pause]
Reverend Hood: You’re a scientist - can you deny the responsibility?
David: Can you?
[pause]
David: After all, there’s never been a kingdom given to so much bloodshed as that of Christ.
Reverend Hood: That’s Montesquieu, isn’t it?
David: Oh, really?
Louise Hood: Who’s he?
Reverend Hood: Somebody well worth reading.

Here he is alienating one of the few folks in town who has read Montesquieu…and is not a thug.

David: We leave all the doors unlocked. It could have been anybody passing.
Amy: “Anybody passing”? David, a complete stranger comes into our house, decides to strangle our cat and hang her in the bedroom wardrobe? Somebody passing?!

She does have a point, of course.

Amy: You’re a coward…and I’m a coward. Plain and simple.

And in a "man's man world" to boot,

David [sort of firmly]: Ok, you’ve had your fun. I’ll give you one more chance, and if you don’t clear out now, there’ll be real trouble. I mean it.

Left them shaking in their boots, right?

Amy: David, give Niles to them. That’s what they want. They just want him. Give them Niles, David!
David: They’ll beat him to death.
Amy: I don’t care! Get him out!
David: You really don’t care, do you?
Amy: No, I don’t.
David: No. I care. This is where I live. This is me. I will not allow violence against this house.

Now who's the coward?

David [to Amy]: Listen to me. You know what happens if they get in now? They’ll kill us all. They’ve gone too far to back down now. You understand that?
[Amy nods her head]
David: We’re dead if they get in.

At least.

David: Jesus. I got 'em all!

A man's man always does.

Henry: I don’t know my way home.
David: It’s okay. I don’t either.

Here is good enough for us, right?.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

“If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.”

For example, he says, "you're next".

It was an awful thought to go and sit there among logical positivists ...

Same here?

At the end of reasons comes persuasion.

After that comes, "or else!"

He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.

Or here, the clouds. Tumbling down out of them, for example.

To be sure, I can imagine what Heidegger means by being [Sein] and anxiety [Angst]. Man feels the urge to run up against the limits of language. Think for example of the astonishment that anything at all exists. This astonishment cannot be expressed in the form of a question, and there is no answer whatsoever. Anything we might say is a priori bound to be mere nonsense. Nevertheless, we do run up against the limits of language.

Hear! Hear!
Though, it appears, considerably more so in the is/ought world.

There are, indeed, things that are inexpressible. They show themselves. They are what is mystical.

You first.

John Wayne once complained that The Wild Bunch set to crumpling all the mythologies once embedded in the way most folks remembered [or wanted to remember] the “Old West”.

Closer to how it actually was in other words: considerably more capricious, chaotic and violent. A place where justice is bought and paid for. Meaning a place where [like any other place] one thing never changes: you follow the money. Or, in one particular case, the washers.

Mostly this is about the wild wild west coming to a close. Here we’re now well into the 20th century. And this bunch is mostly beyond the retirement age of the outlaw. There’s that classic scene where the wild bunch are in a Mexican town when an automobile drives in. Dutch looks on astonished and says, “Now what in the hell is that?!” That is the future. That is capitalism about to explode the world of “cowboys and Indians” to bits.

As for the “good guys” hunting them down, they’re worse than the bastards they’re chasing. And then it all gets entangled in the Mexican Revolution. The rich and the powerful up here and the rich and the powerful down there calculating the most propitious ways in which to divide up the pies.

Of course the women here are little more than chattel.

Supposedly, more blank rounds were discharged during the production than live rounds were fired during the Mexican Revolution of 1916 around which the film is loosely based. In total 90,000 rounds were fired, all blanks.

The name “The Wild Bunch” originally came from real-life western outlaw Butch Cassidy. At age 30 he started his own gang of outlaws, who were quickly christened “The Wild Bunch” by the press.

According to Harrigan, Thornton is Pike’s Judas goat. A Judas goat is an animal trained to lead others into a slaughterhouse. Its life is spared as it “betrays” its own kind. IMDb


The Wild Bunch

Pike: If they move, kill 'em.

Define move?

Crazy Lee: Feathers flew like a turkey! Well, they shouldn’t have run; they shouldn’t have run.
[Deke shoots him]
Crazy Lee: Well, how’d you like to kiss my sister’s black cat’s ass?

The crazy part, I suspect.

Pike: You boys want to move on or stay here and give him a… decent burial?
Tector: He was a good man, and I think we oughta bury him.
Pike: He’s DEAD! And he’s got a lot of good men back there to keep him company!
Lyle: Too damn many!
Dutch [sarcastically]: I think the boys are right. I’d like to say a few words for the dear, dead departed. And maybe a few hymns’d be in order. Followed by a church supper. With a choir!

Tongue in cheek, no doubt.

Angel [Gazing across the Rio Grande]: Mexico lindo.
Lyle: I don’t see nothin’ so lindo about it. It just looks like more of Texas as far as I am concerned.

Nothing lindo from the other side either, I suspect.

Tector: Silver rings.
Dutch [angry]: “Silver rings”, your butt! Them’s washers! Damn!
Lyle: Washers. Washers. We shot our way out of that town for a dollar’s worth of steel holes!
Pike: They set it up.
Lyle: “They”? Who in the hell is “they?”
Sykes [laughing hysterically]: “They”? Why, they is the plain and fancy they, that’s who “they” is! Caught you, didn’t they? Tied a tin can to your tail. Led you in and waltzed you out again. Oh my, what a bunch! Big tough ones, hunh? Here you are with a handful of holes, a thumb up your ass, and a big grin to pass the time of day with. They? Who the hell is “they?”
Pike: Railroad men…bounty hunters…Deke Thornton.

The duped bunch, let's call them.

Pike: We gotta start thinking beyond our guns. Those days are closing fast.

In fact, today there are only about 400,000,000 guns left in America.

Pike [talking about the railroad]: There was a man named Harrigan. Used to have a way of doin’ things. I made him change his ways. A hell of a lot of people, Dutch, just can’t stand to be wrong.
Dutch: Pride.
Pike: And they can’t forget it…that pride…being wrong. Or learn by it
Dutch: How ‘bout us, Pike? You reckon we learned from bein’ wrong, today?
Pike: I sure hope to God we did.

You know, if there is a God.

Pike [looking at the car]: I saw one just like it in Waco.
Lyle: Running on steam?
Pike: No, on alcohol or gasoline.
Sykes: You know what I heard? I heard they got one of those things up to north that can fly.
Tector: That was a balloon, you damned old fool.
Pike: No, the old man is right. They’ve got motors and wings and go 60 miles in less than an hour. Going to use them in the war.

Progress, let's call it.

Angel: Would you give guns to someone to kill your father or your mother or your brother?
Pike: Ten thousand cuts an awful lot of family ties.

Of course, that's the equicalent of $157,832 today.

Dutch: Damn Deke Thornton to hell!
Pike: What would you do in his place? He gave his word.
Dutch: He gave his word to a railroad.
Pike: It’s his word.
Dutch: That ain’t what counts! It’s who you give it to!

Write that down, okay?

Sykes: I didn’t expect to find you here.
Deke: Why not? I sent them back; That’s all I said I’d do.
Sykes: They didn’t get very far.
Deke: I figured.
Sykes: What are your plans, now?
Deke: Drift around down here. Try to stay out of jail.
Sykes: Well, me and the boys got some work to do. You want to come with us? It ain’t like it used to be; but it’ll do.

Sometimes you have to settle for that, I suppose.

So, what’s the difference between a serious man and a serious Jewish man? Well, scrap all the crap about God and religion and there’s really no difference at all. Shit happens to everyone. Some are just better than others at turning it all into a joke.

What sets this particular rendition of thumping suburbia apart from all the others is simple: It’s the Coen Brothers rendition. Parts of it unfold in a theater of the absurd. It can mean whatever you want it to mean. And that is then interchangeable with whatever meaning anyone else wants it to be. But in the end at least everyone is too busy laughing to give it much thought.

Still, meaning is everywhere here. Or, rather, the search for it is. Is it found? Sure, if you believe it's been found. And, sure, it’s the meaning you give it if you believe that too. But most of the characters here don’t seem too convinced. Or it sounds like the meaning they convey is both derived from and dispensed by rote. Or they are too busy actually living their lives [or too cynical] to give a crap about stuff like that.

Bottom line? It’s all fucking hopeless. But at least we can grin while we bear it.

You do learn a lot of new words here. Well, if you’re not Jewish. So I thought I would provide the “goys” with a glossary:
https://www.focusfeatures.com/article/a ... a_glossary



A Serious Man

Larry: So, uh, what can I do for you?
Clive: Uh, Dr. Gopnik, I believe the results of physics mid-term were unjust.
Larry: Uh-huh, how so?
Clive: I received an unsatisfactory grade. In fact: F, the failing grade.
Larry: Uh, yes. You failed the mid-term. That’s accurate.
Clive: Yes, but this is not just. I was unaware to be examined on the mathematics.
Larry: Well, you can’t do physics without mathematics, really, can you?
Clive: If I receive failing grade I lose my scholarship, and feel shame. I understand the physics. I understand the dead cat.
Larry: You understand the dead cat? But… you… you can’t really understand the physics without understanding the math. The math tells how it really works. That’s the real thing; the stories I give you in class are just illustrative; they’re like, fables, say, to help give you a picture. An imperfect model. I mean - even I don’t understand the dead cat. The math is how it really works.

Click?

Son: Dad…fix the aerial. We can’t get F Troop.

An emergency, let's call it.

Clive’s Father: Culture clash. Culture clash.
Larry: With all respect, Mr. Park, I don’t think it’s that.
Clive’s Father: Yes.
Larry: No. It would be a culture clash if it were the custom in your land to bribe people for grades.
Clive’s Father: Yes.
Larry: So… you’re saying it is the custom?
Clive’s Father: No, this is a defamation. Grounds for lawsuit.
Larry: Let me get this straight: you’re threatening to sue me for defaming your son?
Clive’s Father: Yes.
Larry: But it would…See…if it were defamation there would have to be someone I was defaming him to, or I… all right, I… let’s keep it simple. I could pretend the money never appeared. That’s not defaming anyone.
Clive’s Father: Yes. And a passing grade.
Larry: Passing grade.
Clive’s Father: Yes.
Larry: Or… you’ll sue me.
Clive’s Father: For taking money.
Larry: So he did leave the money.
Clive’s Father: This is defamation!
Larry: It doesn’t make sense. Either he left the money or he didn’t.
Clive’s Father: Please. Accept the mystery.

The mystery of money, let's call it.

Larry [on phone]: There’s some mistake. I’m not a member of the Columbian Record Club.
Dick Dutton: Sir, you are Lawrence Gopnik of 8419 Fern Hill Road?
Larry: No, I live at the Jolly Roger.
Dick Dutton: Okay, well, you received your twelve introductory albums and you have been receiving the monthly main selection for four months now…,
Larry: “The monthly main selection?” Is that a record? I didn’t ask for any records.
Dick Dutton: To receive the monthly main selection you do nothing.
Larry: That’s right! I haven’t done anything!
Dick Dutton: Yes, that’s why you receive the monthly main selection. The last one was Santana Abraxis. You…
Larry: I didn’t ask for Santana Abraxis!
Dick Dutton: You request the main selection at the retail price by doing nothing. It is automatically mailed to you. Plus shipping and handling. You’re about to get Cosmo’s Factory, sir. The June main selection. And you haven’t…
Larry: Look, something is very wrong! I don’t want Santana Abraxis!
Dick Dutton: You had fourteen days to listen to Santana Abraxis and return it if you weren’t completely satisfied. You did nothing. And now you…
Larry: I didn’t ask for Santana Abraxis! I didn’t listen to Santana Abraxis!
Dick Dutton: We can’t make you listen to the record.

This was once an actual thing.

Larry: No, I- well, yeah… sometimes… or… I don’t know; I guess the honest answer is “I don’t know”. What was my life before? Not what I thought it was. What does it all mean? What is Hashem trying to tell me, making me pay for Sy Ableman’s funeral?
Rabbi Nachtner: How does God speak to us? A good question.

Anyone here actually know?.


Rabbi Nachtner: You know Lee Sussman.
Larry: Doctor Sussman? I think I - yeah.
Rabbi Nachtner: Did he ever tell you about the goy’s teeth?
Larry: No… I- What goy?
Rabbi Nachtner: So… Lee is at work one day; you know he has the orthodontic practice there at Great Bear. He’s making a plaster mold - it’s for corrective bridge work - in the mouth of one of his patients, Russell Kraus. The mold dries and Lee is examining it one day before fabricating an appliance. He notices something unusual. There appears to be something engraved on the inside of the patient’s lower incisors. He vav shin yud ayin nun yud. “Hwshy 'ny”. “Help me, save me”. This in a goy’s mouth, Larry. He calls the goy back on the pretense of needing additional measurements for the appliance. “How are you? Noticed any other problems with your teeth?” No. There it is. “Hwshy 'ny”. “Help me”. Son of a gun.

I'll check your teeth if you'll check mine.

Larry [standing in front of this gigantic chalkboard plastered with mathematical equations]: X squared, so that delta x equals the square root of .077 A squared minus zero, from which we derive the square root of .077 A squared. And also the uncertainty in P is equal to the square root of bracket P squared minus bracket P squared which also equals the square root of H over A squared. Which lets us delta X, delta P equals the square rootof .077 A squared H over A, and 1.74 H bar. Okay? The Uncertainty Principle. It proves we can’t ever really know what’s going on. But even though you can’t figure anything out, you will be responsible for it on the mid-term.

Meaning, morality and...math?

Marshak’s Secretary: The rabbi is busy.
Larry: He didn’t look busy!
Marshak’s Secretary: He’s thinking.

Exhausting, right?

Rabbi Marshak: When the truth is found to be lies.
[the rabbi clears his throat]
Rabbi Marshak: And all the hope within you dies. Then what?
[the rabbi clears his throat again]
Rabbi Marshak: Grace Slick. Marty Balin. Paul Kantner. Jorma…
Danny: Kaukonen.
Rabbi Marshak: …something. These are the members of the Airplane. Interesting. Here.
[He gives Danny back his radio]
Rabbi Marshak: Be a good boy.

God and the Jefferson Airplane?

Larry [answering the phone]: Hello?
Dr. Shapiro: Larry, Dr. Shapiro. Larry could you come in and discuss these X-ray results? Remember the X-rays we took?
Larry: We can’t discuss them on the phone?
Dr. Shapiro: I think we’d be more comfortable in person. Can you come in?
Larry: When?
Dr. Shapiro: Now. Now is good. I’ve cleared some time now.

Cue the abyss?

God

“Statistics, likelihoods, and probabilities mean everything to men, nothing to God.” Richelle E. Goodrich

If only for all practical purposes?

“So tonight to shush you how about if I say I have administrative bones to pick with God, Boo. I'll say God seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I'm not crazy about. I'm pretty much anti-death. God looks by all accounts to be pro-death. I'm not seeing how we can get together on this issue, he and I, Boo.” David Foster Wallace

And now, David?

“I bet you've seen the fundamentalist bumper sticker that says, 'God said it! I believe it! That settles it!' It must be a typo because what the driver really means is, 'I said it! God believes it! That settles it!'" Robert M. Price

All jokes aside, which one is it?

“I mean, think about the phrase 'love the sinner, hate the sin.' Isn't it like saying, 'I love left-handed people but hate that they're left-handed.' Is that really love? Or is that saying, 'I'm willing to love you as I'd like you to be, not as you are'? Either God's love is unconditional or it's not.” Alex Sanchez

Yeah, what about that!

“The question, 'What is the difference between God and Satan?,' was put to Zeena LaVey, seven-year-old daughter of the High Priest. Her answer was...
'SATAN MADE THE ROSE AND GOD MADE THE THORNS.'” Zeena Schreck

Yeah, what about that!

“I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we've dressed Him up, or is it dressed Him down?” Ray Bradbury

Let's ask Him about when He returns.

You could spend hours and hours trying to explain to the really tough guys how closely they resemble cartoon characters…but it wouldn’t do you any good. They are just too invested in the narrative. What has become meaningful in the world revolves around being in the gang. And being in the gang means butting heads with all the tough guys in the other gangs. And butting heads with the cops. And butting heads with the squares. There’s just not enough time in the day to think about anything else.

The fish rumble because that’s what rumble fish do. But it’s not like they’re doing it for any…cause. Instead, it’s just another macho bullshit rendition of fight club. Only the first rule here is to stay alive.

In fact, the only thing that might alter their course is someone who sees through the narrative as just that—as one particular way of looking at the world in a world where there are lots of other ways of looking at it as well. Ways not all that obvious when [basically] you’re just a loser. Or a little whacked up in the head.

Or maybe not a loser at all. Or not even crazy. Maybe just suffused with this nihilistic sense of not really fitting into what so many others ascribe to all the sane winners.

Matt Dillon had read the book a few years before doing the movie, and in an interview with S.E. Hinton, said that it was his favorite book. Hinton said that when someone told her that “Rumble Fish” was their favorite book, usually “they were in a reformatory”.

A clock can be seen in [practically] every scene of this movie. IMDb


Rumble Fish

Midget: Hey, Rusty James. Biff Wilcox is Looking for you.
Rusty James: I’m not hiding’.
Midget: Says he’s gonna kill you.
Rusty James: Sayin’ ain’t doin’.

Well, that's true. It's not like they're rumbling up in the clouds.

Rusty James: I love fights! This reminds me of the old days when we had rumbles. Heroin ruined the gangs. Ask my brother. A gang really meant something then.

Mine was the center of the universe. And then I found God.

Motorcycle Boy: What do you think California’s like?
Rusty James: Like all that shit in the movies. Blondes walkin’ around. The Beach Boys. Palm trees, the ocean. How was the ocean?
Motorcycle Boy: I didn’t get to the ocean. California got in the way.
Rusty James: California got in the way? I thought California was on the coast.

Figured it out yet?

Father: Strange lives you two lead.
Rusty James: Strange? At least I’m not a lawyer on welfare.

Is that even possible?

Benny [voiceover]: Time is a funny thing. Time is a very peculiar item. You see when you’re young, you’re a kid, you got time, you got nothing but time. Throw away a couple of years, a couple of years there… it doesn’t matter. You know. The older you get you say, “Jesus, how much I got? I got thirty-five summers left.” Think about it. Thirty-five summers.

He's been dead now for 5 years then.

Motorcycle Boy: You know, if you’re going to lead people, you have to have somewhere to go.

To the next rumble of course.

Motorcycle Boy: California’s like a beautiful, wild… beautiful, wild girl on heroin… who’s high as a kite, thinkin’ she’s on top of the world, not knowing she’s dying even if you show her the marks.

Duped by dope, as it were.

Motorcycle Boy: I mean, blind terror in a fight can easily pass for courage.

Me, I was awarded the Bronze Star for my own blind terror.

Rusty James: How can you tell if someone is crazy?
Benny: Can’t always…Depends on how many think he’s crazy.

Just out of curiosity, how many is that now?

Smokey: You know, if there were gangs around like in the old days, I’d be running things, not you. You’d be second lieutenant. You might have gotten by for a while on the Motorcycle Boy’s rep, but you have to be smart to run things. You ain’t got your brother’s brains. It’s nothing personal, Rusty James, but nobody would follow you into a fight because you’d get people killed - and nobody wants to be killed.

Right, like that isn't an integral part of being in a gang.

Father: Every now and then, a person comes along, has a different view of the world than does the usual person. It doesn’t make them crazy. I mean…an acute perception, man…that doesn’t, that doesn’t make you crazy.
Rusty James: Could you talk normal?
Father: However sometimes… it can drive you crazy, acute perception.
Rusty James: I wish you’d talk normal ‘cause I don’t understand half the garbage you’re saying. You know? You know what I mean?
Father: No, your mother… is not crazy. And neither, contrary to popular belief, is your brother crazy. He’s merely miscast in a play. He was born in the wrong era, on the wrong side of the river… with the ability to be able to do anything that he wants to do and findin’ nothin’ that he wants to do. I mean nothing.

It may well be even less than that.

Patterson the Cop: What’s the big interest in the pet store all of a sudden?
Mr. Dobson: They’ve been hanging around here.
Motorcycle Boy: Take a look at the fish.
Patterson the Cop: You’re crazy. You’re really crazy. And, you know, I’ve known all about it all along.
Motorcycle Boy: But they belong in the river.
[gesturing at the fish]
Motorcycle Boy: I don’t think they would fight if they were in the river. If they had room to live.
Patterson the Cop: Someone ought to get you off the streets.

Tell that to the fish.

Ex-con from Britain sets out to investigate the mysterious “accidental” death of his daughter in Los Angeles. Seeks out another ex-con to help him. And in the course of pursuing this he finds himself sinking down into in all the corrosive phlegm that L.A. expectorates on a daily basis. If you get up high enough into it.

He goes around blowing people away, sure, but it is made rather clear that you probably would do the same thing to creeps like this. Come on, hasn’t Stacy earned the right to be blown away? Under the circumstances, as it were. Think Dexter without a code.

Done a million times, true. But the execution here takes us beyond the genre that is commonly called “the thriller”.

Here the protagonist comes to finally understand how he himself had unwittingly participated in his own daughter’s demise. He had set the dominos up to fall years before. But it leaves out just enough to make you realize you will never really be able to piece it all together with any real satisfaction. It is more about the complex manner in which human relationships unfold…precipitating consequences which we have no real way of grasping fully at the time. We can only try to learn from them as best we can.

The editing here is fantastic.


The Limey

Terry: Did you ever dream about a place you never really recall being to before? A place that maybe only exists in your imagination? Some place far away, half remembered when you wake up. When you were there, though, you knew the language. You knew your way around. That was the sixties.
[pause]
Terry: No. It wasn’t that either. It was just '66 and early '67. That’s all there was.

Or that's all he remembers.

Wilson: What are we standing on?
Ed: Trust.

That can't be good.

Stacy: You know, I’d tell you to blow it out your ass, but my dick’s in the way.

Now that's clever. I might use it myself one day.

Uncle John: We makin’ trouble for someone?
Stacy: Yep.
Uncle John: Which kind?
Stacy: The forever kind.

Stacy the hitman.

Wilson: How you doin’ then? All right, are you? Now look, squire, you’re the guv’nor here, I can see that. I’m in your manor now. So there’s no need to get your knickers in a twist. Whatever this bollocks is that’s going down between you and that slag Valentine, it’s got nothing to do with me. I couldn’t care less. Alright, mate? Let me explain. When I was in prison - second time - uh, no, telling a lie, third stretch, yeah, third, third - there was this screw that really had it in for me, and that geezer was top of my list. Two years after I got sprung, I sees him in Arnold Park. He’s sittin’ on a bench feedin’ bloody pigeons. There was no-one about, I could’ve gone up behind him and snapped his fuckin’ neck, wallop! But I left it. I could’ve knobbled him, but I didn’t. ‘Cause what I thought I wanted wasn’t what I wanted. What I thought I was thinkin’ about was something else. I didn’t give a toss. It didn’t matter, see? This jerk on the bench wasn’t worth my time. It meant sod-all in the end, ‘cause you gotta make a choice: when to do something, and when to let it go. When it matters, and when it don’t. Bide your time. That’s what prison teaches you, if nothing else. Bide your time, and everything becomes clear, and you can act accordingly.
DEA Agent: There’s one thing I don’t understand. The thing I don’t understand is every motherfuckin’ word you’re saying.

That's what the bullets are for.

Wilson: What could this deal have been, to set in motion such an unfortunate chain of events?
DEA agent: Could have been anything. A shitload of heroin imported from somewhere or other. The usual scumbags involved. But the thing about scumbags is no matter what they do with drugs, it’s harder to move the money. The money. In my line of work, you follow the money.

All the way, say, to the root of all evil?

DEA agent: Your daughter, Mr. Wilson…she had a fondness for dangerous men.

One too many, as it were.

Ed: Do you understand half the shit he says?
Elaine: No, but I know what he means.

The bottom line let's call it.

Philosophy

“The premise of the Taker story is 'the world belongs to man'. … The premise of the Leaver story is 'man belongs to the world'.” Daniel Quinn

Actually, I didn't know that.

“An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its 'self-help' section: 'For true self-help, please visit our philosophy, literature, history and science sections, find yourself a good book, read it, and think about it.'” Roger Ebert

Next up: an honest philosophy forum.

“Even if you are alone you wage war with yourself.” Dejan Stojanovic

The good news? Only all the way to the grave.

“Every country has the government it deserves.” Joseph de Maistre

Or, perhaps: “Every philosophy forum has the posters it deserves.”

"Everybody knows that Aristotelian two-value logic is fucked.” Philip K. Dick

Twice, in fact.

“Ideas are the source of all things” Plato

The fool!