Philosophy Now Forum

This is one of those films that was roundly thumped by the critics. But not by the general public. Over at RT the critics gave it a 19% fresh rating. And on 156 reviews. Meanwhile from nearly 60,000 user ratings it score a whopping 79%. At Metacritic it scored only a 31% approval rating while Amazon users gave it a 75%. At IMDb, it garnered a 74% rating from over 65,000 users.

This isn’t nearly in the same league with Dead Man Walking. For one thing it hardly gives equal time to both sides. But I really couldn’t believe some of the shit the critics were saying about it. You’d think it was a Jerry Springer production. Though, sure, there were parts that were way over the top. But the film was never really about the death penality itself so much as the life of one particular man who tried to put a stop to it.

In part the film explores how a political debate [being conducted by actual flesh and blood human beings] can easily become entangled in ego. Then it becomes less about demonstrating that you are right and more about demonstrating that your opponent is wrong. And not only that: a fucking idiot.

Or maybe the critiques revolved in part around the manner in which it seemed to show how easy it could be for former student of David Gale to falsely accuse him of rape. Not a very liberal frame of mind. And even though the charges are later dropped he has already lost his job…and his career is down the toilet. Then he loses custody of his son. It follows him around wherever he goes.

But mostly the legitimate criticism revolves around this hopelessly contrived, convoluted plot to prove that innocent people are executed. In fact there are already so many more actual examples [not hopelessly contrived and convoluted] that clearly show this to be the case. Besides, as the governor rationalizes on TV, “the system cannot be blamed for the acts of one deranged individual with a political ax to grind.”


The Life of David Gale

Barbara: I don’t get to make the rules, Joe. Please, I’m a fat black woman.

That'll do it.

Bitsey: You know you are in the bible belt when there are more churches than Starbucks.
Zack: When there are more prisons than Starbucks.

Not that there shouldn't be, of course.

Grover [prison PR man]: All executions in the state of Texas occur over at our Huntsville unit downtown but death row is here for the time being. This is home to all 442 offenders prior to their date. Average stay is nine years. Now, some get commuted, but most get put to death.

The criminal just us system.

David: No one who looks through that glass sees a person. They see a crime. I’m not David Gale. I’m a murderer and a rapist…

Right, like that makes no sense at all.

Bitsey: So where do we begin?
David: Well, I suppose I should tell you how I became the head of philosophy at the University of Austin…

On the other hand...

David [lecturing his class]: I want you to reach back into those minds and tell me, tell us all… What is it that you fantasize about? World peace? Do you fantasize about international fame? Do you fantasize about winning a Pulitzer Prize? Or a Nobel Peace Prize? An MTV Music Award? Do you fantasize about meeting some genius hunk, ostensibly bad…but secretly simmering with noble passion…and willing to sleep on the wet spot? Fantasies have to be unrealistic because the moment, the second that you get what you seek, you don’t, you can’t want it anymore. In order to continue to exist, desire must have its objects perpetually absent. It’s not the “it” that you want, it’s the fantasy of “it.” So, desire supports crazy fantasies. This is what Pascal means when he says that we are only truly happy when daydreaming about future happiness. Or why we say the hunt is sweeter than the kill. Or be careful what you wish for. Not because you’ll get it, but because you’re doomed not to want it once you do. So the lesson of Lacan is, living by your wants will never make you happy. What it means to be fully human is to strive to live by ideas and ideals and not to measure your life by what you’ve attained in terms of your desires but those small moments of integrity, compassion, rationality, even self-sacrifice. Because in the end, the only way that we can measure the significance of our own lives is by valuing the lives of others.

Yep, he’s a philosopher alright. Is he also a fool?

Constance: The T.A. finished transcribing all the governor’s radio and TV comments. Listen to this gem. “Journalist: Governor, don’t you think three executions in one week is excessive? Governor: 'I say, bring’em in, strap’em down and let’s rock and roll.”’
David: It’s good to hear that our governor’s in touch with his inner frat boy.
Constance: I’ve highlighted stuff. He’ll do the whole “down home wisdom” thing…capital punishment is God’s law, an eye for an eye. Stick to arguments about rational facts. And watch your ego. Don’t come across as one of those "I hate authority… 'cause everyone around here wears big hats and nobody in charge reads The New Yorker.

Again, this is Texas.

David: Something profoundly stupid happened last night.
Constance: I hope you used a condom. Oh. Jesus Christ, David. Was she one of yours?
David: It was Berlin.
Constance: Oh, great! Oh, that’s great. I can hear the grapevine now. “They had to suspend her so that Gale could dick her with a clear conscience.”

And how ironic is that?

Constance [to David who is about to debate the governor on a TV progam]: There are 17,000 murders a year in the United States. Ten of the 12 states that have abolished the death penalty have a murder rate that’s lower than the national average. And if he starts with the religious stuff, just say that nearly every denomination in the United States opposes the death penalty.

On the other hand: "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Governor: Alan, let me say something I always say and I’m gonna keep on saying. And that is that I HATE killin’. That’s why my administration is willing to kill to stop it.
David: Murderers are not deterred by the thought of execution. They’re just not, and you know it. Every single study that’s been done on this subject…and there’s been over 200… and you’ve read them… has reached the same conclusion. They all say the same thing.
Governor: Well, maybe you should read your Bible. Deuteronomy 19::21. An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.
David: What did Gandhi say about that? “The old law of an eye for an eye leaves us all blind.”
Governor: Well, I’m sorry…and with respect…that’s fuzzy liberal thinking.
David: You really believe that, Governor?
Governor: Of course.
David: That’s interesting. 'Cause you said that yourself in a speech in your first campaign.
Governor [flustered]: You’ve got me, Professor. But let me, in my defense, offer YOU a quote. Winston Churchill: ‘If you’re not a liberal at twenty, you have no heart, if you’re still a liberal at thirty, you’ve got no brain.’
David: So, basically, you feel, to choose another quote, ‘society must be cleansed of elements which represent its own death.’
Governor: Well, yes. I’d have to agree. Did I say that too?
David Gale: No, that was Hitler.

So, who won?

Zach: You still don’t think he’s telling the truth.
Bitsey: On the Berlin rap?
Zach: On the whole rap.
Bitsey: Who knows? Anyway, there is no truth, only perspectives.
Zach: If you say there’s no truth, you’re claiming it’s true there’s no truth. It’s a logical contradiction.
Bitsey: Working on our Philosophy Merit Badge, are we?

New thread!!!

Bitsey: Whoever this is knows how hard it is to get a retrial in Texas. They know the magazine can’t give this any substantial play before the execution. We’d have to give it to a daily or a network. That won’t happen. But mostly, they know I’ll tell Gale today.
Zach: So?
Bitsey: What if Constance’s murder was just a means of getting at Gale…not only to get rid of him, but to make abolishionists look crazy? Of course he sympathizes with murderers. He is one. They make sure he sits six years on death row for a brutal rape and murder, then they let him die…die knowing everyone will remember him with disgust. They destroy his life, his work, his memory…and they make him watch. That’s a lot of hate.
Zach: Well, then why release it?
Bitsey: Hate’s no fun if you keep it to yourself.

Nope. That’s not it. Not even close.

David: Bitsey, we spend our whole lives trying to stop death. Eating, inventing, loving, praying… fighting, killing. But what do we really know about death? Just that nobody comes back. But there comes a point in life…a moment…when your mind outlives its desires, its obsessions. When your habits survive your dreams…and when your losses…
[pause]
David: Maybe death is a gift.

And maybe it’s simply a release from all that.

R.D. Laing

If the blind must lead the blind, it is as well that the leader knows he is.

Let's run this by Elon Trump.

How dare you have fun when Christ died on the cross for you! Was he having fun?

Knot that I know of.

The reason I suggest that one speaks of a false-self system is that the 'personality', false self, mask, 'front', or persona that such individuals wear may consist in an amalgam of various part-selves, none of which is so fully developed as to have a comprehensive 'personality' of its own.

Fractured and fragmented as it were.

Under the heading of "defense mechanisms,” psychoanalysis describes a number of ways in which a person becomes alienated from himself. For example, repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection. These "mechanisms" are often described in psychoanalytic terms as themselves "unconscious,” that is, the person himself appears to be unaware that he is doing this to himself. Even when a person develops sufficient insight to see that "splitting", for example, is going on, he usually experiences this splitting as indeed a mechanism, an impersonal process, so to speak, which has taken over and which he can observe but cannot control or stop. There is thus some phenomenological validity in referring to such "defenses" by the term "mechanism.” But we must not stop there. They have this mechanical quality because the person as he experiences himself is dissociated from them. He appears to himself and to others to suffer from them. They seem to be processes he undergoes, and as such he experiences himself as a patient, with a particular psychopathology. But this is so only from the perspective of his own alienated experience. As he becomes de-alienated he is able first of all to become aware of them, if he has not already done so, and then to take the second, even more crucial, step of progressively realizing that these are things he does or has done to himself. Process becomes converted back to praxis, the patient becomes an agent.

Human psychology...don't leave home without it.

The experience and behavior that gets labeled schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation.

Right, a strategy.

Many people used to believe that angels moved the stars. It now appears that they do not. As a result of this and like revelations, many people do not now believe in angels. Many people used to believe that the ‘seat’ of the soul was somewhere in the brain. Since brains began to be opened up frequently, no one has seen ‘the soul’. As a result of this and like revelations, many people do not now believe in the soul. Who could suppose that angels move the stars, or be so superstitious as to suppose that because one cannot see one’s soul at the end of a microscope it does not exist?

I'll help you find yours if you'll help me find mine.

You lose someone. You grieve. But [as they say] no two people grieve alike.

Least of all as she does. And she grieves for someone who may not even have existed. For a relationship only as she imagined it was. She teeters back and forth between lucidity and delusion. And her friends teeter back and forth between trying to help her and risking a reaction that will only make her worse.

And then the mystery surrounding his disappearance. Did he commit suicide? Was it an accident? Did he even drown at all? Or did he only want it to appear as though he did. Why? To get away from her perhaps?

Into the mix we also have a woman who is right on the cusp between the part in the middle and the part at the end. Death is getting closer and closer. That tugs her into the past, that tugs her into the future. It is a frame of mind that must be actually experienced I suppose.

This is about how well we really do know those that we think we know inside and out. You see this time and time and time again on true crime accounts of husbands and wives and families who don’t really have a clue regarding the people they imagine one way when in fact they are really quite the opposite.

Is it better to know or not to know? But every context is different. In the end it all seems to come down to options. The ones you actually have and the ones you try to convince yourself you have.


Under the Sands [Sous le Sable]

Marie: I love teaching. Right now we’re working on “The Waves” by Virginia Woolf. It’s a wonderful book. The students like it.
Vincent: I read it as a teenager. But I don’t really remember it.
Marie: “I have the feeling that I shall go mad. I hear voices and I cannot concentrate on my work. I’ve tried to fight it but I cannot fight it any longer. I owe all my happiness in my life to you. You’ve been so perfectly good I cannot go and spoil your life.”
Vincent: That’s…
Marie: The suicide note she left to her loved ones.
Vincent: Terrifying. She drowned herself with rocks in her pockets.
Marie: I think it’s a beautiful death.
Vincent: I’m not surprised. The English are fascinated by things morbid.

Let's explain that.

Marie: Amanda, if you knew anything about him you would tell me, wouldn’t you?
Amanda: Of course I would. You are my best friend. But now it is time to forget. There is no point in going over it again and again. You have to carry on. You have to live for yourself.
Marie: Do you think Jean is unhappy with me?

You know, from "the other side".

Marie: I think Jean may have killed himself.
Mother: My son, suicide? There are no suicides in the Drillon family.
Marie: I just wanted to tell you that Jean was depressed.
Mother: I knew that.
Marie: How did you know it?
Mother: I’m his mother.
Marie: And I’m his wife.
Mother: But you didn’t realize he was suffering.
Marie: It’s hard for me to believe that Jean confided in you.
Mother: Well, you’re wrong. You underestimate our relationship.
Marie: Oh, give me a break. If you know something, tell me. I can’t stand it anymore.
Mother: I don’t think for a minute Jean committed suicide. Or even drowned. The truth is more cruel. He disappeared, quite simply, because he was bored. Or more accurately, bored with you. He wanted a new life. To start over. That’s understandable, isn’t it? Many men dream of doing it.

And, one suspects, many women too.

Marie [to Jean’s mother]: You belong in an insane asylum, not a rest home.
Mother: You’ll be in one before I am.

I guess we'll never know.

Thomas Nagel

Nature is such as to give rise to conscious beings with minds; and it is such as to be comprehensible to such beings. Ultimately therefore such beings should be comprehensible to themselves.

The Gap? Rummy's Rule? The Benjamin Button Syndrome? Forget about them...

One of the legitimate tasks of philosophy is to investigate the limits of even the best developed and most successful forms of contemporary scientific knowledge. It may be frustrating to acknowledge, but we are simply at the point in the history of human thought at which we find ourselves, and our successors will make discoveries and develop forms of understanding of which we have not dreamt.

See, I told you.

Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning, but intellectual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole.

See, I told you.

It is not enough to be able to think that if there are logical truths, natural selection might very well have given me the capacity to recognize them. That cannot be my ground for trusting my reason, because even that thought implicitly relies on reason in a prior way.

All the way back to God, let's say?

The evolutionary story leaves the authority of reason in a much weaker position. … Evolutionary naturalism implies that we shouldn’t take any of our convictions seriously, including the scientific world picture on which evolutionary naturalism itself depends.

More trivial pursuits, right?

Whatever one may think about the possibility of a designer, the prevailing doctrine—that the appearance of life from dead matter and its evolution through accidental mutation and natural selection to its present forms has involved nothing but the operation of physical law—cannot be regarded as unassailable. It is an assumption governing the scientific project rather than a well-confirmed scientific hypothesis.

Thank god for assumptions!

Some people are clearly more pathetic than others. And though committing adultery doesn’t necessarily make you pathetic it might be an indication you are heading in that direction. It depends on just how much of a fool you are willing to make of yourself.

And some people [for whatever reason] are just not cut out to be parents. Children can spot them a mile away. And they let Mommy and Daddy know this. But this tends only to further the distance between them. Sooner or later something’s got to give.

It works the same way between husbands and wives. They are not really cut out to be married and yet there they are married. Married with children. Psychologists no doubt are still working on it. Unfornately, it will come too late for folks like me.

And then there is always that gap between the work you do and the work you want to do instead. If you have a job at all.

But then most folks seem pretty much convinced that being a pedophile makes you partivularly pathetic. But here it seems that people can become pathetic when they spend their whole life hounding them. If only because they have little else to do. Or they need a scapegoat. Or because of something they did in the past. Larry, in other words, is clearly the most pathetic one of all. But then look where that comes from.

Or maybe it’s Sheila.

The bottom line is that one way or another these suburban denizens are inclined to do pathetic things. In other words, things that you wouldn’t do. But where do you draw the line here between being pathetic and being…evil?

Anyway, there really isn’t anyone to root for here. Or no one I felt inclined to.

The narrator is Will Lyman. Lyman’s distinctive voice is often heard on Frontline, a documentary show where his narration is similar to that heard in the film. IMDb


Little Children

Narrator: Smiling politely to mask a familiar feeling of desperation, Sarah reminded herself to think like an anthropologist. She was a researcher studying the behavior of typical suburban women. She was not a typical suburban woman herself.

She could have fooled me.

Mary Ann [the park mothers are discussing Ronnie]: He should just be castrated. Just snip, quick and easy. Chop it off.
Sarah [sarcastically]: You know what else you should do? Nail his penis above the entrance to the elementary school. That’d really teach him a lesson.

Or is that going too far?

Brad [talking about his wife]: She makes documentaries.
Sarah: Oh, like Michael Moore?
Brad: Like PBS.

She probably knows Cliff Stern then.

Sarah [to Brad]: Do you know what would really freak them out?

For starters, say.

Narrator: For the past few days Sarah hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything but the prom king and the curious thing that had happened to them on the playground. She didn’t feel shame or guilt, only a sense of profound disorientation…as if she had been kidnapped by aliens and then released unharmed a few hours later.

Isn't that how it always starts out?

Narrator: It felt so good to be standing there beneath the bright lights. And he was filled with a feeling similar to the one he had right before kissing Sarah, like his world had cracked open to reveal a thrilling new possibility.

Like he isn't already married to a...Goddess?

Narrator: If there was one thing life had taught Richard, it was that it was ridiculous to be at war with his own desires. We want what we want Richard thought, and there’s not much we can do about it.

Next up: what others can do about it.

Brad: You have a nice place here.
Sarah: You think? Yeah, Richard does pretty well for himself.
Brad: Oh, yeah? What’s he do?
Sarah: He lies.

That's not all he does though, is it?

Mom: Why wouldn’t these women not want to meet a nice person like you?
Ronnie: I’m not a nice person.
Mom: You did a bad thing. But that doesn’t make you a bad person.
Ronnie: I have a psycho-sexual disease.
Mom: You’re better now. They wouldn’t have let you out if you weren’t.
Ronnie: They let me out because they had to.

He's right, of course.

Mom: You’re a miracle, Ronnie. We’re all miracles. Know why? Because as humans, every day we go about our business, and all that time we know…we all know…that the things we love…the people we love, at any time now can all be taken away. We live knowing that and we keep going anyway. Animals don’t do that.

Let's run that by Sheila.

Sarah: I think I understand your feelings about this book. I used to have some problems with it, myself. When I read it in grad school, Madam Bovary just seemed like a fool. She marries the wrong man; makes one foolish mistake after another; but when I read it this time, I just fell in love with her. She’s trapped! She has a choice: she can either accept a life of misery or she can struggle against it. And she chooses to struggle.
Mary Ann: Some struggle. Hop into bed with every guy who says hello.
Sarah: She fails in the end, but there’s something beautiful and even heroic in her rebellion. My professors would kill me for even thinking this, but in her own strange way, Emma Bovary is a feminist.
Mary Ann: Oh, that’s nice. So now cheating on your husband makes you a feminist?
Sarah: No, no, it’s not the cheating. It’s the hunger. The hunger for an alternative, and the refusal to accept a life of unhappiness.

They are all in over their heads, Sarah. Just let it go.

Narrator: Sexual tension is an elusive thing, but Kathy had pretty good radar for it. It was like someone had turned a knob to the right, and the radio station clicked in so loud and clear it almost knocked her over. Once she became aware of the connection between them, it seemed impossible that she’d missed it before.

Let's run this by the prom king.

Narrator: In his wildest dreams Larry would never have imagined he’d once again be in this position, where precious minutes count. Tonight he could save a life. He knew Ronnie had done some bad things in the past, but so had Larry. You couldn’t change the past. But the future could be a different story. And it had to start somewhere.

In other words, they all come to their senses and go back to living their lies.

Integrity

“Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words." Roy T. Bennett

What, no context?

“I prefer to surround myself with people who reveal their imperfection, rather than people who fake their perfection.” Charles F. Glassman

Like we can always tell the difference.

“Each mind conceives God in its own way. There may be as many variation of the God figure as there are people in the world” Bangambiki Habyarimana

I would never go that far myself. On the other hand, could I?

“Healthy resilience comes from a place of integrity, and it's allowing ourselves to feel and to genuinely be who we want to be and to show up how we want to in this world.” Keisha Blair

Let's run that by, among others, iambiguous.

“Once you compromise your integrity, you make it easier to give in to temptation the next time.” Frank Sonnenberg

I would hope so in this world.

“We deny truth when it becomes an inconvenience.” Allene vanOirschot

And, of course, here, practice makes perfect.

Nowhere near as good as the original [Le Femme Nikita] but ever since Single White Female I sort of fell in love with Bridget Fonda. You know, from a distance.

Personally, I don’t think the shadow government [or what some folks insist is the real government] has actually gone this far yet. But if it turns out that they have, I wouldn’t exactly be surprised. Let alone shocked. Especially these days, right?

And, after all, she did only kill a cop trying to help her.

The whole plot is preposterous. But then so are the explanations the government gives in order to rationalize the things it does behind the curtain. Like train assassins. And not just on “foreign soil”. On the other hand, we all know that the CIA [and their ilk] are not “chartered” to do their thing on U.S. soil. These folks must be an aberration.

Wink, wink.


Point of No Return

Maggie: So…you’re going to give me this ‘chance.’ What do I got to do?
Bob: Learn, Maggie. Learn to speak properly; learn to stand up straight for a start. Then languages, computers, and so on.
Maggie: What if I’m not interested?
Bob: Row 48, Plot 12.

They've got her by the balls, say.

Maggie: And what if I say I need more time?
Bob: And what if I say there is no more time?
Maggie: And what if I say you can kiss my ass right in the crack?

A challenge or an invitation?

Maggie [to Bob]: Oh, I think she’s saying, “Stick it in me twice a day, and I’ll do anything for you.”

Stick what in her, he wondered.
Then he figured it out.

Bob: And now for the bad stuff. Kaufmann has drawn the line in the sand. He says he is not going to take any more crap from you. He mentioned the word “bullet,” and he mentioned the word “brain.”

Kill her in other words. And why not, she is already dead to the world.

Bob: So, how are you?
Maggie: I just blew up a hotel. How the hell do you think I am?

A CIA thing.

Maggie: Fuck you ! That was My last job! I’m through! I’m out!
Bob: Listen, which word don’t you understand? There is no out, there is no through, there is no out!

On the other hand...

Victor: I’m Victor. I’m the cleaner.

And it won’t be the last time either.

Maggie: I never did mind about the little things.

See for yourself.

David Lynch

I look at the world and I see absurdity all around me. People do strange things constantly, to the point that, for the most part, we manage not to see it.

What, not even virtually?

The beautiful thing is that when you catch one fish that you love, even if it’s a little fish—a fragment of an idea—that fish will draw in other fish, and they’ll hook onto it. Then you’re on your way. Soon there are more and more and more fragments, and the whole thing emerges. But it starts with desire.

Next up: going fishing here.
And, no, not just for those godawful objectivists.

In a Town like Twin Peaks noone is innocent.

Anyone innocent here? As opposed to, say, not guilty?

The house is a place where things can go wrong.

Would you believe in some houses more so than others?

Within your own self is a treasury, an ocean of pure bliss, consciousness, intelligence, creativity, love, happiness, energy, and peace… within every human being. Experience that and you will begin to know yourself, which is unbounded, eternal totality.

You find mine, I'll find yours.

Inside, we are ageless...and when we talk to ourselves, it's the same age of the person we were talking to when we were little. It's the body that is changing around that ageless center.

And now, David?

Firing people. That’s what he does for a living. And one can imagine what that was like “back then”. Back then being smack dab in the middle of the Great Recession. The one many are still in. You could sure rack up a lot of frequent flyer miles doing that. And he did. In fact, he was closing in on 10,000,000. That’s a lot of wrecked lives behind him.

That’s where Natalie comes in. She wants to “revolutionize” the way they fire folks. Online, for example. That means you don’t need guys like Ryan to actually get on a plane and fly to all those destinations. He can do it right from the home office.

Of course in corporatespeak they don’t fire folks with white collars so much as give them a nudge into the future. Thus they are referred to euphemistically as “career transition counselors”. And how comforting does that sound? Maybe that’s why you don’t run into many career transition counselors if your collar is blue. You get fired the old-fashioned way: as though you don’t even exist at all. Which, to the employer, you don’t.

Natalie does change the terminology though. When you fire someone over the internet you are what she calls a “termination engineer”. And to make it all more impersonal still everyone is required to learn the “script”. To follow the “process”.

Then there’s the other part of the movie. The part where we delve into the personal lives of the three main protagonists. We follow the evolution of their relationships. That’s the part they should have trimmed.

In the end you are left to wrestle with the possibility that this might be the best of all possible worlds. And how fucking depressing is that?

A large amount of the people we see fired in the film are not actors but people who were recently laid off. The filmmakers put out ads in St. Louis and Detroit posing as a documentary crew looking to document the effect of the recession. When people showed up, they were instructed to treat the camera like the person who fired them and respond as they did or use the opportunity to say what they wished they had. A way to discern who are the actors and who are the real people is that the real people do not have dialogue with George Clooney or Anna Kendrick, as they were shot separately. Jason Reitman did this intentionally, feeling that the real people would freak out Clooney and Kendrick. IMDb

By all means, let’s spare them.



Up In the Air

[They just got fired]
Man: “This is what I get in return for 30 years of service for my company? And they send some yo-yo like you in here, to try to tell me that I’m out of a job? They should be telling you you’re out of a job.”
Woman: “You have a lot of gall, coming in here and firing your No.1 producer. Then you’re going to go home tomorrow and make more money than you’ve ever made in your life and I’m going to go home without a pay check. Fuck you.”
Man: “I guess you leave me dumbfounded. I don’t know where this is coming from. How am I supposed to go home as a man and explain to my wife I lost my job?”
Man: “On a stress level, I’ve heard that losing your job is like a death in the family. But personally, I feel more like the people I worked with were my family and I died.”
Woman: “I can’t afford to be unemployed. I have a house payment, I have children.”
Man: “I don’t know how you can live with yourself, but I’m sure that you’ll find a way while the rest of us are suffering.”
Man: “Who the fuck are you, man?!”

Again, however, only until the workers of the world unite.

Ryan [voiceover]: Excellent question. Who the fuck am I? Poor Steve has worked here for seven years. He’s never had a meeting with me before or passed me in the hall, or told me a story in the break room. That’s because I don’t work here. I work for another company that lends me out to pussies like Steve’s boss who don’t have the balls to sack their own employees. And in some cases for good reason, because people do crazy shit when they get fired.

Next up: the crazy shit we have to deal with here.

Ryan [before an audience]: How much does your life weigh? Imagine for a second that you’re carrying a backpack. I want you to pack it with all the stuff that you have in your life. You start with the little things. The shelves, the drawers, the knickknacks, then you start adding larger stuff. Clothes, tabletop appliances, lamps, your TV…the backpack should be getting pretty heavy now. You go bigger. Your couch, your car, your home. I want you to stuff it all into that backpack. Now try to walk. This is what we do to ourselves on a daily basis We weigh ourselves down until we can’t even move. And make no mistake…moving is living. Now, I’m gonna set that backpack on fire. What do you want to take out of it? Photos? Photos are for people who can’t remember. Drink some ginkgo and let the photos burn. In fact, let everything burn and imagine waking up tomorrow with nothing. It’s kind of exhilarating, isn’t it?

So how's that woking out for you?

Alex: Oh, my God. I wasn’t sure this actually existed. This is the American Airlines…
Ryan: It’s a Concierge Key, yeah.
Alex: What is that, carbon fibre?
Ryan: Graphite.
Alex: Oh, I love the weight.
Ryan: I was pretty excited the day that bad boy came in.
Alex: I’ll say. I put up pretty pedestrian numbers. 60 thousand a year, domestic.
Ryan: That’s not bad.
Alex: Don’t patronize me. What’s your total?
Ryan: It’s a personal question.
Alex: Please.
Ryan: And we hardly know each other.
Alex: Come on, show some hubris. Come on, impress me. I bet it’s huge.
Ryan: You have no idea.
Alex: How big? What is it, this big? This big?
Ryan: I don’t want to brag.
Alex: Oh, come on! Come on.
Ryan: Let’s just say I have a number in mind and I haven’t hit it yet.
Alex: This is pretty fucking sexy.
Ryan: Hope it doesn’t cheapen our relationship.
Alex: We’re two people who get turned on by elite status. I think cheap is our starting point.
Ryan: There’s nothing cheap about loyalty.

Up in the air, as it were.

Craig [the boss]: I’m thrilled that everyone’s back under one roof. Welcome home, boys. I know there’s been a lot of whispering about why we’re here, so let me jump right in. Retailers are down 20%. Auto industry is in the dump. Housing market doesn’t have a heartbeat. It is one of the worst times on record for America. This is our moment.

If you get his fucked up drift.

Ryan: Bingo - Asians.
Natalie: You can’t be serious.
Ryan: Never get behind people traveling with infants. I’ve never seen a stroller collapse in less than 20 minutes. Old people are worse. Their bodies are littered with hidden metal and they never seem to appreciate how little time they have left on earth. Five words: randomly selected for additional screening. Asians, they pack light, travel efficiently, and they’ve got a thing for slip-on shoes, God love em.
Natalie: That’s racist.
Ryan: I’m like my mother, I stereotype. It’s faster.

That certainly seems to be the case here.

Employee being fired [holding up a photo of his kids]: What do you suggest I tell them?
Natalie: Perhaps you’re underestimating the positive effect that your career transition can have on your children.
Employee being fired: The positive effect? I make about 90 grand a year now. Unemployment is what - 250 bucks a week? Is that one of your positive effects? We’ll get to be cosier cause I’m not gonna be able to pay my mortgage on my house. So maybe we can move into a nice fucking one-bedroom apartment somewhere. And I guess without benefits, I’ll be able to hold my daughter as she, you know, suffers from her asthma that I won’t be able to afford the medication for.
Natalie: Well…tests have shown that children under moderate trauma have a tendency to apply themselves academically as a method of coping.
Employee being fired: Go fuck yourself.

Let's run this by Donald Musk and the federal worlders here.

Natalie [to ryan]: Please, for the love of God, can I fire the next one?

After she grows a pair?

Ryan [to Natalie after the woman she fired threatened to commit suicide]: They say crazy things. They get worked up.
Natalie: She was really calm.
Ryan: I think that’s a good sign.
Natalie: So they don’t ever actually do it?
Ryan: No. No. It’s just talk.
Natalie: How do you know? Do you follow up?
Ryan: I mean, no, nothing good’s gonna come of that, but… I wouldn’t worry about it. This is what we do, Natalie. We take people at their most fragile and we set em adrift.

Capitalism let's call it.

Ryan [speaking to audience]: Now I want you to fill your backpack with people. Start with casual acquaintances, friends of friends, folks around the office… and then you move into the people you trust with your most intimate secrets. Your brothers, your sisters, your children, your parents and finally your husband, your wife, your boyfriend, your girlfriend. You get them into that backpack, feel the weight of that bag. Make no mistake your relationships are the heaviest components in your life. All those negotiations and arguments and secrets, the compromises. The slower we move the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other to live symbiotically over a lifetime. Star crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We are not swans. We are sharks.

This is the actual mentality that many key components in the capitalist system subscribe to: everyone is expendable in the end. It’s always us or them.

Natalie: How does it not cross your mind that you might want a future with someone?
Ryan: It’s simple. You know that moment when you look into somebody’s eyes and you can feel them staring into your soul and the whole world goes quiet just for a second?
Natalie: Yes.
Ryan: Right. Well, I don’t.

That makes at least two of us then.

[Natalie fires Mr. Samuels over the internet]
Mr Samuels: What’s all this? What’s going on?
Natalie: Hello, Mr Samuels. I wish I were here with better news. However, your position here at Wertheimer’s is no longer available.
Mr Samuels: What are you talking about?
Natalie: You’ve been let go.
Mr. Samuels: Just like that? Who are you?
Natalie: My name is Miss Keener and I’m here today to talk about your options.
Mr Samuels: I worked for this company for 17 years and they send a 4th-grader to can me? What the fuck is this?
Natalie: It’s perfectly normal to be upset. However, the sooner you can tell yourself that greater opportunities…
Mr. Samuels: Greater opportunities? I’m 57 fucking years old!
Natalie: Anybody who ever built an empire or changed the world sat where you are now. And it’s because they sat there that they were able to do it. There’s a packet in front of you. I want you to take some time and review it. All the answers you’re looking for are inside those pages. The sooner you trust the process, the sooner the next step of your life will unveil itself. I need you to go back to your office now and put together your personal things.
[Mr. Samuels breaks down into tears]
Natalie: Mr Samuels, that’s all we can discuss now. Mr Samuels. Mr Samuels. Mr Samuels!

One down, 50 more to go.

Karen: Don’t you talk for a living? Motivational type stuff?
Ryan: I tell people how to avoid commitment.
Karen: What kind of fucked up message is that?!
Ryan: It’s a philosophy.
Karen: It’s stupid.
Ryan: Hey, it could have helped you.
Karen: Look, you haven’t been around much. Fuck…basically, you don’t exist to us. I know you wanna be there for her. Well, here it is. This is your chance.

Sure, this works for most folks.

Craig: Do you remember Karen Barnes, part of a 30-person reduction a few weeks back in Wichita? Natalie fired her.
Ryan: We fired dozens of people a day. I…
Craig: She killed herself - jumped off a bridge.
Ryan: Fuck.
Craig: I need to know if you remember any woman that gave you any signals, depression…
Ryan: They’re all depressed. We’re firing them.
Craig: Hey, I need to ask you this stuff, OK?
Ryan: No, I don’t remember anything. You never think that they’re…
Craig: You don’t remember any woman that gave you any signals? Anything at all, Ryan?
Ryan: No, nothing stands out. Is Natalie all right?
Craig: Natalie quit.

If only because that was an actual option for her.

Like you, I wasn’t actually there to witness the final days of Adolph Hitler’s Nazi regime. The fact is I [like you probably] wasn’t even born yet. So we both have to assume that what we are seeing on the screen is a reasonably accurate portrayal of what did in fact happen. In part because the film is based on information that comes from those who were actually there.

But even that has to be taken with grains of salt—if only because these folks almost certainly nudged the truth [whether consciously or not] in a particular direction. One, for example, that might put their own story in a more favorable light. Or because they wish to perpetuate a particular political narrative. Or because they remember it in a way that only more or less reflects what actually happened.

There was plenty of controversy surrounding the film, especially in Germany. Not the least regarding the folks who expressed outrage at the manner in which Hitler was fleshed out existentially and portrayed as an actual multi-dimension human being… rather than as the caricature of an evil, knee-jerk moral monster. Some even went so far as to claim it was a “sympathetic” portrayal of him. Personally, I didn’t see it that way at all. He seemed to go back and forth between being maniacally mad and maniacally malevolent.

“Orders from the Fuhrer!”

Here there were different reactions. From those who followed them no matter how irrational and idiotic…from those were ever calculating: what is best for me though?..from those who felt compelled to do the right thing, no matter the consequences. In a word: dasein.

Then there is Joseph Goebbels and his wife Magda. They utterly embody the truly scary mentality of the uber-fanatic. The authoritarian mind. Blindly willful and willfully blind right down to the bitter end. And then there is that horrific scene where they choose to take their six children with them to the grave. Better dead than to live in a world without National Socialism.

From Magda’s letter to her son: "Our magnificent idea has died, along with every beautiful, admirable, noble, good thing I’ve ever known. The world after the Fuhrer’s death and after National Socialism is no longer worth living in. That’s why the children are here. They are too good for what will come. A merciful God will understand me for giving them redemption."

Based on the books “Der Untergang” by historian Joachim Fest and “Bis zur letzten Stunde” by Traudl Junge, Adolf Hitler’s last private secretary from 1942 to 1945.

Of the thirty-seven named real life people featured as characters in the film, Rochus Misch was the only one who was still alive when the film was released. He eventually died in 2013.

Many of Adolf Hitler’s lines are historically accurate, based on accounts from Albert Speer and Traudl Junge, most of them however are from earlier dates.

Corinna Harfouch stated that she nearly broke down when filming the scene in which Magda Goebbels gives her children their “medicine” to put them to sleep before poisoning them. Bruno Ganz felt similarly when he held the girl playing one of the Goebbels’ children in his lap as they sang, because he knew that these children were soon to be murdered by their parents.

During the war, the majority of the cyanide capsules produced were made in the concentration camps, which made sabotage a real problem. This is one of the reasons why many Germans who committed suicide by cyanide also shot themselves to make sure they would die. This is also the reason why Adolf Hitler’s beloved dog Blondi was poisoned; he wanted to make sure his batch of cyanide was not fake.


Downfall

Traudl Junge: I’ve got the feeling that I should be angry with this child, this young and oblivious girl. Or that I’m not allowed to forgive her for not seeing the nature of that monster. That she didn’t realise what she was doing. And mostly because I’ve gone so obliviously. Because I wasn’t a fanatic Nazi. I could have said in Berlin, “No, I’m not doing that. I don’t want to go the Führer’s headquarters.” But I didn’t do that. I was too curious. I didn’t realise that fate would lead me somewhere I didn’t want to be. But still, I find it hard to forgive myself.

As well she ought to be?

Himmler: When I meet Eisenhower, should I give the Nazi salute, or shake his hand?

Too close to call?

Mohnke: There are over 3 million civilians in Berlin. They have to be evacuated.
Hitler: I appreciate your concern, Mohnke. But we have to be cold-blooded. We can’t worry about these so-called cilvilians now!
Mohnke: My Fuhrer, with all due respect, what will become of the women and children, the thousands of wounded and the elderly.
Hitler: In a war as such there are no civilians.

That's one way to look at it.

Generalfeldmarschall Keitel: The Führer has lost all sense of reality.
Generaloberst Jodl: He moves divisions that only exist on his map. Steiner’s scattered unit can hardly defend itself and yet, Steiner is ordered to attack! It’s pure madness!
SS-Gruppenführer Fegelein: Then why don’t you tell him yourself?
Generalfeldmarschall Keitel: He won’t listen to reason. You should know that.
SS-Gruppenführer Fegelein: Something must be done.
Generalfeldmarschall Keitel: Are you insane? We’ll be thrown out like Rundstedt and Guderian!
SS-Gruppenführer Fegelein: Yes, and?
Generaloberst Jodl [glares at Fegelein]: We are soldiers! We pledged our allegiance to the Führer!
SS-Gruppenführer Fegelein: So that means we are no longer allowed to think?

That's exactly what it means in the military.

Hitler: If the war is lost it is immaterial if the people perish…They have proved themselves weak and it is a law of nature that they will be exterminated.

Next up: Elon Trump?

Hitler: That was an order! Steiner’s assault was an order! Who do you think you are to dare disobey an order I give? So this is what it has come to! The military has been lying to me. Everybody has been lying to me, even the SS! Our generals are just a bunch of contemptible, disloyal cowards… Our generals are the scum of the German people! Not a shred of honour! They call themselves generals. Years at military academy just to learn how to hold a knife and fork! For years, the military has hindered my plans! They’ve put every kind of obstacle in my way! What I should have done… was liquidate all the high-ranking officers, as Stalin did!

Next up: Elon Trump?

Hitler: The war is lost…But gentlemen if you think that I’ll leave Berlin for that, you are sadly mistaken. I’d prefer to put a bullet in my head and blow my brains out.

Good for him!

Bridagefuhrer: The Russians are mowing down your Volkssturm recruits. They lack experience and suitable weapons.
Goebbels: That is compensated for by their fervent belief in final victory!
Brigadefuhrer: If you can’t arm these men, they can’t fight. They are dying in vain.
Goebbels: I feel no sympathy. I repeat, I feel no sympathy! The German people chose their fate. That may surprise some people. Don’t fool yourself. We didn’t force the German people. They gave us a mandate, and now their little throats are being cut!

Clearly, some objectivists are more fanatic than others.

Hitler: General von Greim, I appoint you to Commander in Chief of the Air Force and General Field Marshal. A large responsibility rests on your shoulders. You must shake up the entire air force. Many mistakes have been made, so be ruthless. Life never forgives weakness. This so called humanity… is just priests’ drivel. Compassion is a primal sin. Compassion for the weak is a betrayal of nature.
Goebbels: The strongest can only be victorious by eradicating the weak.
Hitler: I have always obeyed this law of nature by never permitting myself to feel compassion. I have ruthlessly suppressed domestic opposition and brutally crushed the resistance of alien races. It’s the only way to deal with it. Apes, for example, trample every outsider to death. What goes for apes goes even more for human beings.

The fool!

General Weidling: My Führer, as a soldier I suggest we try to break through the encirclement. During the fight for Berlin we’ve already lost 15-20,000 of the younger officers.
Hitler: But that’s what young men are for.

Common sense some call it.

Magda Goebbels: Sleep tight, children.

And then some, let's say.

Traudl Junge: All these horrors I’ve heard of during the Nurnberg process, these six million Jews, other thinking people or people of another race, who perished. That shocked me deeply. But I hadn’t made the connection with my past. I assured myself with the thought of not being personally guilty. And that I didn’t know anything about the enormous scale of it. But one day I walked by a memorial plate of Sophie Scholl in the Franz-Joseph-Strasse. I saw that she was about my age and she was executed in the same year I came to Hitler. And at that moment I actually realised that a young age isn’t an excuse. And that it might have been possible to get to know things.

Let's get to finally know things here for a change.

Marshall McLuhan

The medium is the message.

Virtually, here.

Once you see the boundaries of your environment, they are no longer the boundaries of your environment.

You tell me.

Many a good argument is ruined by some fool who knows what he is talking about.

Don't you just hate that?

One thing about which fish know exactly nothing is water, since they have no anti-environment which would enable them to perceive the element they live in.

Sounds about right.

Art is anything you can get away with.

Not unlike philosophy here.

We look at the present through a rear view mirror. We march backwards into the future.

My guess: for better or worse.

We’ve all thought about it: The folks who decide what films will be rated—who the hell are they?!

And that is what this film sets out to tell us. Well, here in America anyway. And they are exactly the sort of people you imagined them to be. Or they are if you are me.

In a land still brimming over with religion [and reactionaries], censorship will revolve mainly around sex: nudity, the acts themselves, the words used to describe them. Even the DVD I purchased reflects that. The original picture on the front of the box shows a fully nude woman with her ass smack dab in the middle of it. On my copy though [bought used through Amazon] there is a big black box plastered over it.

And then there is the part about capitalism. Films are first and foremost commodities. And increasingly sex does sells. So things here can then get real complicated. But one thing is rather simple: the big Hollywood film studios are in cahoots with the MPAA [and pay their bills] because it means that many independent films are forced to either accept an NC-17 rating [the kiss of death in theatres and with video/dvd sales] or recut the film and resubmit it. The MPAA literally goes after the independent film makers according to the filmmaker. Jack Valenti was the “producers man”, the “studios man” in Hollywood. And coming from Washington, he embodied crony capitalism.

Of course this is all about protecting the children they tell us, The rating allows the “average parent” and “normal human beings” to decide if this is a film they want their children to watch. “Ordinary people” is what Jack Valenti says he is looking for. Right.

It’s the sheer arbitrary nature of the decisions that is most maddening.

So what the filmaker did was hire a couple of private detectives to identify the folks who work [as raters] for the MPAA. It’s all rather intrguing just watching how they managed to accomplish this. You’d think it was a CIA operation. That’s how secret the MPAA is

Obviously, these standards do change over the years. Compare sexuality, nudity, language etc depicted in films 60 to 70 years ago with the stuff in films today. But what has not changed though?


This Film is Not yet Rated

Kimberly Pierce [director, Boys Don’t Cry being interviewed]: After Brandon goes down on Lana, he comes up and wipes the cum off his face. The MPAA didn’t like that. I asked what was the problem and the lawyer said we don’t really know but it was really offensive. So I shot Brandon in the head [with blood gushing out] and do all these other violent things to him and that’s fundamentally okay, but there’s a problem when he wipes his mouth. Can somebody explain that I asked. No, he said. Is there someone I can call. No. Okay, what the next problem? The anal rape. They want it cut out. Well, I’m not cutting it out. It is fundamental to the movie. And the third problem was Lana’s orgasm. It was too long. I said who has ever been hurt by an orgasm that was too long? Well, they said, it’s offensive. And I was like that’s outrageous. So when I looked at her orgasm I thought, oh, this is totally about Lana’s pleasure. It’s the thing that is scaring them.
Interviewer: So what do you think they had a problem with?
Kimberly Pierce: With female pleasure. In a construct where most movies are written by men, directed by men, they’re mostly the male experience.

Next up: Brown Bunny?

Man [faceteously explaining the rating system]: In a PG-13 film the word fuck is also allowed but usually just once. So filmmakers are urged to choose their “fuck” carefully. Fuck you is okay but referring to the sexual act such as “may I please fuck you” or “I really enjoyed getting fucked” are unacceptable.

So, is that facetious enough for you?

John Waters: The worst censorship of all is Walmart, Blockbuster…all the big chains that are probably responsible for 40% of all DVD sales will not carry NC-17 rated films.

Save the children!

Wayne Kramer [director, The Cooler]: I got a phone call from the producer of the film saying that we got an NC-17 rating. I said “was it for that first scene” and they said “no it was because there was a glimpse of Maria’s pubic hair in the second scene”.
Maria Bello: Just a couple of months beore I had gone to see a horror film rated R – a funny one – and in the first ten minutes a women gets her fake breast cut out and there’s blood everywhere. And that’s what made me so furious…to want to go in and fight for my public hair. I’m a mother. Why should that movie get rated R and why, just for seeing my pubic hair, do we get an NC-17? It was a beautiful moment between two people that had a lot to do with love.

Your pubic hair too, I suspect.

Title card: Joan Graves…ratings board chairperson…only board member known to public…appointed by Jack Valenti…registered Republican…age of children: 29 and 32…personally hires all other raters…lives in a multi-million dollar home.

Imagine then a shot of her pubic hair...

Joel Federman [author, Media Ratings]: We’ve looked at rating systems across 30 different countries and the MPAA is the only one that refuses to disclose who its rating board members are.

Well, that's about to change.

Title card: For more than 30 years, Jack Valenti has overseen the ratings system and kept the names of the raters secret. During that time only two have broken their silence.

And listening to these two explain the “process” is nothing short of mind-boggling.

Bingham Ray [co-founder, October Films]: I’m going to say the F-word. I believe it’s a fascist system. They have just established themselves and injected themselves as a vital necessary entity and it isn’t.

Let's run this by Donald Musk to confirm it.

David L. Robb: The military and the film studios have colluded for more than 50 years. Anytime filmmakers want military assets - ships or tanks or planes - they have to give the Pentagon five copies of their script. And, if there’s anything in the script that’s negative, the Pentagon wants them to take it out. And so they negotiate, and take out any war crimes or foul language, or drinking. Anything that would make the military look bad. And than, after the agreement is made, the military sends a minder onto the set, when the film is being shot, to make sure it’s shot just the way they agreed. And then, once the film is completed, it has to be shown to the Pentagon, admirals and generals, before it’s shown to the public. Dozens of films have not been made because they couldn’t get military assistance. So, people have no idea what they’re not seeing. Jack Valenti knew what was going on. He was complicit, he was a part of it. It’s a subtle form of brainwashing. Fifty years of the constant drumbeat that the military is good, American soldiers are heroic etc. I think it has made the American people more war-like.

On the other hand, of late, we can't seem to win any of them.

Atom Egoyan [director, Where The Truth Lies]: The lady who was from the MPAA [Joan Graves] said you are so close…if you just made some scenes a bit fuzzier…but then she stopped herself and said “but I’m not an artist, I don’t know how you compose that…”[/b]

Said with not even a trace of irony.

Atom Egoyan [on phone with press discussing the appeals board]: …it seems there are members of the clergy in screenings by the raters…two denominations, Episcopalian and Catholic. And there is always going to be an Epicolpalian and Catholic which are part of the discussion that we are not privy to.

And then the lies. One appeals board member [Michael McCellan] tells them the clergy are just there as observers while another [speaking anonymously] insisted that not only do the two clergymen participate in the discussion, they cast votes too. And then the detectives tracked down the identities of the appeals board members. Every single one of them are owners of a large chain of theatres or in some other capacity a big shot in the film industry.

Crony capitalism, I'm guessing.

Jack Valenti [in interview]: I don’t know what is going to be on my tombstone…but I’d like to write it and say that the modest legacy Jack Valenti left the movie industry is that he freed the screen from all artificial barriers.

He really did say that. Right up there on the screen. Another minion of the ruling class.

Hey, it’s just a comic book, right? No, it’s a graphic novel. What’s the difference? You got me. The characters just seem more like caricatures to me. More silly superheroes. But they do say a lot of clever stuff and, from time to time, you even find yourself thinking, uh, philosophically about it.

One drawback [for some] though is that it’s still set in the world [historically] that doesn’t really exist anymore. They further wondered: Suppose instead the filmmakers updated the narrative and made it more relevant to, say, the “war on terror”? Would Alan Moore have minded? Maybe. But to the best of my knowledge he has never seen the movie anyway. And never will?

Here the superheroes actually worked for the government. Hell, between them they helped Nixon win the Vietnam war!! I guess that’s one way to do it. So why not bring them back to the future so that Bush and Obama could win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

And then there’s Rorschach. How exactly do you pin him down. But then he does remind me of a few of the Kids here. If you know what I mean. Talk about will to power! And boy does this guy ever hate bleeding heart liberals.

The ending is kind of…absurd. The world revolves around a doomsday clock because of “human nature”. And so the only way to set it back is by “tricking” it. But if it is in the nature of human beings to destroy themselves a trick only buys a little time.

Look for a miracle. And a whole new way of thinking about them.


Watchmen

Rorschach [voiceover]: Rorschach’s Journal. October 12th, 1985: Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout “Save us!”… and I’ll whisper “no.”

And he means it.

Dan [examining blood stained Comedian badge]: Is this bean juice?
Rorschach: Human bean juice.

If you get his drift.

Silk Spectre: Oh, Laurie, you’re still young. You don’t know. Things change. What happened happened 40 years ago. I’m 67 years old. Every day, the future looks a little bit darker. But the past… even the grimy parts of it…keep on getting brighter.

You get this or you don't.

Jon: She was pregnant. And you gunned her down.
Blake: That’s right. And you know what, you watched me. You could’ve turned the gun into steam, the bullets into mercury, the bottle into goddamned snowflakes but you didn’t, did you? You really don’t give a damn about human beings.

Yeah, what about that, Jon?

Adrian: It doesn’t take a genius to see that the world has problems.
Blake: No, but it takes a room full of morons to think they’re small enough for you to handle.

Cue Elon Trump?

Blake: Congress is pushing through some new bill that’s gonna outlaw masks. Our days are numbered. Till then it’s like you always say, we’re society’s only protection.
Dan: From what?
Blake: You kidding me? From themselves.

Let's outlaw masks here.

Dan: What happened to us? What happened to the American Dream?
Blake: “What happened to the American Dream?” It came true! You’re lookin’ at it…

Dream on in other words.

Jacobi: I have cancer.
Rorschach: What kind of cancer?
Jacobi: Well, you know the kind you eventually get better from?
Rorschach: Yes.
Jacobi: Well, that ain’t the kind I got.

Whatever possessed God in Heaven to invent cancer?

Rorschach [voiceover]: I heard a joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he’s depressed. Says life is harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world. Doctor says, “Treatment is simple. The great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go see him. That should pick you up.” Man bursts into tears. Says, “But doctor… I am Pagliacci.”

Oh...

Janet Black: Doctor Manhattan as you know the Doomsday Clock is a symbolic clock face analogizing humankind’s proximity to extinction, midnight representing the threat of nuclear war. As of now it stands at four minutes to midnight.

Today? "It is 89 seconds to midnight"
On the other hand...

Jon: My father was a watch maker. He abandoned it when Einstein discovered time is relative. I would only agree that a symbolic clock is as nourishing to the intellect as photograph of oxygen to a drowning man.

A photograph of oxygen?

Rorschach: You see, Doctor, God didn’t kill that little girl. Fate didn’t butcher her and destiny didn’t feed her to those dogs. If God saw what any of us did that night he didn’t seem to mind. From then on I knew…God doesn’t make the world this way. We do.

Well, not counting all of this...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_earthquakes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l ... _eruptions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... l_cyclones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tsunamis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landslides
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fires
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_floods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... ore_deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_diseases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events

...of course.

Rorschach [to the GP prisoners]: None of you seem to understand. I’m not locked in here with you. You’re locked in here with me!

As some are about to find out.

Laurie: Everyone will die!
Jon: And the universe will not even notice.

There’s always that to look forward to.

Jon [to Adrian]: The world’s smartest man poses no more threat to me than does its smartest termite.

Said the cartoon character.

Adrian: I don’t mind being the smartest man in the world, I just wish it wasn’t this one.

Hear! Hear!

Yuval Noah Harari

Does happiness really depend on self-delusion?

So far anyway.

In a world in which everything is interconnected, the supreme moral imperative becomes the imperative to know.

Someone run this by Donald Musk.

Gender is a race in which some of the runners compete only for the bronze medal.

You know who to run that by here.

Medieval crusaders believed that God and heaven provided their lives with meaning; modern liberals believe that individual free choices provide life with meaning. They are all equally delusional.

Click, of course.

The first thing you need to know about yourself is that you are not a story.

Or is that the story instead?

If you were an eighteen-year-old youth in a small village 5,000 years ago you’d probably think you were good-looking because there were only fifty other men in your village and most of them were either old, scarred and wrinkled, or still little kids. But if you are a teenager today you are a lot more likely to feel inadequate. Even if the other guys at school are an ugly lot, you don’t measure yourself against them but against the movie stars, athletes and supermodels you see all day on television, Facebook and giant billboards.

And the gals?

A man stalking another man? Sure, it happens. What, do you think that kind of stuff only happens with “normal” people? Besides, for lots and lots and lots of reasons Buck isn’t exactly what you would call normal anyway. For example, he’s a bit, uh, immature. Slow even.

Crazy?

Chuck on the other hand couldn’t possibly be more normal. Drearily so. So Buck’s your man if normal isn’t. And talk about a fish out of water. He’s still in the sixth grade. Or is inside his head. But he’s a sweet guy with the best of intentions and you just can’t help but wish things would work out for him. On the other hand, someone like Buck would drive me up the wall too. But then almost everyone does.

Unfortunately [and this is true for lots of us] the gap between what he wants things to be and what he can make them be is sometimes…enormous.

So Buck has to improvise here. He has to create something like, say, a parallel universe…a world where all the characters are more in tune with his wants and needs. So he writes a play and hires Beverly.

You see, some of us just can’t grow up. But [in the end] Buck sort of does.


Chuck and Buck

Buck: Hi.
Beverly: How can I help you?
Buck: Um, do you put on plays here, and people come and see 'em?
Beverly: Well, this is a theater.
Buck: Well, see, I thought of a play. Would you put that on?
Beverly: You’ve written a play?
Buck [shaking his head]: Uh, no…never.
Beverly: Oh, just creating a hypothetical scenario.
Buck: What if I didn’t want you to read it?
Beverly: Write at the top of the page, “don’t let Beverly read it”…I’ll beg and plead but they won’t let me.

Of course, there's not much that Buck is able to grasp like...normal people?

Jolie: What do you do in L.A., Buck?
Buck: Um, nothing.
Jolie: I know a lot of people who have that job. It’s one of the better jobs you can have. I bet you’re very good at it.

Next up: doing nothing here.

Buck: I think we should play a game.
Chuck: What, like Trivial Pursuit or something?
Buck: Yeah…or…like…we…We could play that game, where I stick my dick in your mouth, and you stick your dick in mine…Chuck & Buck, Suck & Fuck!
Chuck: I think you should get out of here, Buck. I mean it, get out now.

I think he means it.

Sam: Now, uh, would we be playing it like little kids like, uh like, like “La-la-la. I’m a little kid.”
Beverly: Well, you wouldn’t be playing it like a little retarded kid, but yes, you would be acting youthful.

Of course that can get tricky.

Sam: I wonder what Beverly’s twat looks like. You ever wonder that? ‘Cause like sometimes she’ll be talkin’ to me and all I can think is “What’s your twat look like? Why don’t you show it to me you fuckin’ bitch?”… Yeah I’m twisted. I got problems. I know I do.

I guess we'll never know then.

Chuck: You gotta grow up.
Buck: Like you?

Exactly?