Philosophy Now Forum

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sat Feb 15, 2025 2:51 am Don't tell me u have an issue with me

Not at all. Just observin' your compliments aren't compliments.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2025 8:39 pm No woman will ever be truly satisfied on Valentine's Day because no man will ever have a chocolate penis that ejaculates money.

So the misogynistic little americvnt is now speaking for women.

When gangters get into ripping each other off their discussions about ethics can get particularly surreal. So when Johnny fixes a fight, expecting it to go off three to one, he really gets pissed off when other crooks start mucking around with the scam and the odds begin to…depreciate.

And the thing about gangsters is this: when they disagree about the, uh, ethics of a particular transaction they don’t just get banned from future exchanges but tend to settle these things more aggressively. Guns get pulled out and folks end up dead.

But fuck 'em, right? That’s just less gangsters we have around. Only there are always new ones to take their place. Plus there’s the collateral damage. Civilians, in other words.

Things get especially convoluted here because, well, for some of these characters the only way they understand the world is through stereotypes. Some are Jews, some are Irish, some are Italians. Then this gets all tangled up in hierarchy and politics and corruption. And family. And gambling. And grifters. In other words, you are never not watching your back…looking over your shoulder…because someone misunderstood [intentionally or otherwise] what the other guy says or does. Or even thinks.

It’s a very precarious…dangerous…world to fuck up in. And even if you don’t.

Writers Joel Coen and Ethan Coen suffered writer’s block while writing Miller’s Crossing (1990). They took a three week break and wrote Barton Fink (1991) a film about a writer with writer’s block.

‘Yegg’ is a US slang term, with three main meanings - safe-cracker, itinerant burglar, or thug. The last is the most likely meaning used in the context of this film. ‘Twist’ is a slang term for a girl or woman, often used derogatorily. ‘Schmatte’ is a Yiddish word for an old rag and was also used colloquially as a label for things of poor quality or anything worthless. Caspar’s use is derogatory, labeling Bernie worthless both as a man and as a Jew. IMDb



Miller's Crossing

Johnny: I’m talkin’ about friendship. I’m talkin’ about character. I’m talkin’ about – hell, Leo, I ain’t embarrassed to use the word – I’m talkin’ about ethics.

Let's not be embarrassed to talk about it here. Or, rather, what's left of it.

Johnny: So, back we go to these questions–friendship, character, ethics. So, it’s clear what I’m saying?
Leo: As mud.
Johnny: It’s gettin’ so a businessman can’t expect no return from a fixed fight. Now, if you can’t trust a fix, what can you trust? For a good return, you gotta go bettin’ on chance - and then you’re back with anarchy, right back in the jungle. That’s why ethics is important-- what separates us from the animals, the beasts of burden, the beasts of prey. Ethics.

Deontology and gangsters...new thread?

Leo: So you wanna kill Bernie…
Eddie: For starters.

Some might know him better as Jesus Quintana.

Tom: Think about what protecting Bernie gets us. Think about what offending Caspar loses us.
Leo: Oh, come on, Tommy. You know I don’t like to think.
Tom: Yeah. Well, think about whether you should start.

Here? Let's name names.

Leo: Hello, Tommy. You know O’Doole and the mayor?
Tom: I oughta. Voted for him six times last May.
The mayor: And that ain’t the record, either.

Anyone happen to know what that is?

Verna: Leo’s got the right idea. I like him, he’s honest and he’s got a heart.
Tom: Then it’s true what they say. Opposites attract.
Verna: Do me a favor. Mind your own business.
Tom: This is my business. Intimidating helpless women is my job.
Verna: Then go find one, and intimidate her.

Too close to call.

[repeated line]
Tom: Nobody knows anybody. Not that well.

Or less than that actually.

Tom: Rug Daniels is dead.
Verna: Gee, that’s tough.
Tom: Don’t get hysterical. I’ve had enough excitement for one night without a dame going all weepy on me.
Verna: I barely knew the gentleman.
Tom: Rug? A bit of a shakedown artist, not above the occasional grift. Bet you’d understand that. All in all, not a bad guy, if looks, brains and personality don’t count.

And if they do?

Bernie: Tommy, you can’t do this! You don’t bump guys! You’re not like those animals back there. It’s not right, Tom! They can’t make us do this. It’s the wrong situation, they can’t make us different people than we are. We’re not muscle, Tom. I… I… I… never killed anybody. I used a little information for a chisel, that’s all. It’s my nature, Tom! I… I… I… can’t help it, somebody gives me an angle, I play it. I don’t deserve to die for that. Do you think I do?
[Tom doesn’t answer, he just keeps walking]
Bernie: I’m… I’m… I’m just a grifter, Tom. I’m… I’m… I’m… I’m… I’m an nobody! But I’ll tell you what, I never crossed a friend, Tom. I never killed anybody, I never crossed a friend, nor you, I’ll bet. We’re not like those animals! This is not us! Th… th… this is some hop dream! It’s a dream, Tommy! I’m praying to you! I can’t die! I can’t die out here in the woods, like a dumb animal! In the woods, LIKE A DUMB ANIMAL! Like a dumb animal! I can’t… I can’t… I CAN’T DIE OUT HERE IN THE WOODS!.. like a dumb animal. I can’t… die!
[Bernie falls to his knees, praying]
Bernie: I’m praying to you! Look in your heart! I’m praying to you! Look in your heart! I’m praying to you! Look in your heart! I’m praying to you! Look in your heart…
[Tom slowly aims his gun at Bernie]
Bernie: I’m praying to you! Look in your heart. I’m praying to you… look in your heart… look in your heart! You can’t kill me… look in your heart.

I won't spoil it for you if you don't spoil it for me.

Eddie: Where’s Leo?
Hitman: If I tell you, how do I know you won’t kill me?
Eddie: Because if you told me and I killed you and you were lying I wouldn’t get to kill you then. Where’s Leo?
Hitman: He’s moving around. He’s getting his mob together tomorrow night. Whisky Nick’s.
Eddie: You sure?
Hitman: Check it. It’s gold.
Eddie: You know what, yegg? I believe you.
[shoots him]

Ethics let's call it.

Tom: You can’t hijack me, Tic-tac, we’re on the same side now. Or didn’t you get that far in school?

I forget. Did he?

Eddie: How’d you get the fat lip?
Tom: Old war wound. Acts up around morons.
Eddie: Very smart. What were you doing at the club, talking things over with Leo?
Tom: Don’t think so hard, Eddie. You might sprain something.
Eddie: You are so goddamn smart. Except you ain’t.

Let's find out.

Eddie: Well, we’ll go out to Miller’s Crossing…and we’ll see who’s smart.
[at Miller’s crossing]
Eddie: You understand if we don’t find a stiff out here, we leave a fresh one.

Who wouldn't understand that?

Johnny: If the Dane’s saying we should double-cross you…You double-cross once, where’s it all end? An interesting ethical question.

New thread?

Tom [on the phone with Bernie]: If you want me to keep my mouth shut, it’s gonna cost you some dough. I figure a thousand bucks is reasonable, so I want two.

Squared.

Bernie: Tommy…Tommy! Look in your heart…Look in your heart!
[Tom shoots him]
Tom: What heart?[/b]

I suspect he didn't have one.

Materialism

“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.” John Lennon

He means peace with honor of course.

“The world says: "You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder." Fyodor Dostoyevsky

On the other hand, the more things change?

“Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book." Patti Smith

My guess: not all of them.

“The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.” Louis C.K.

Wow, that sure takes us back.

“About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough—and even miraculous enough if you insist—I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about?" Christopher Hitchens

Then the part pertaining to...oblivion?

“A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it.” Lionel Shriver

And suppose you do?

David Lynch

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.

Yeah, right.

We're all like detectives in life. There's something at the end of the trail that we're all looking for.

Unless the bots beat us to it.

If you want to get one hour of good painting in, you have to have four hours of uninterrupted time.

You tell me: https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=b ... =616&dpr=1

It doesn't do any good to say, 'This is what it means.' When you are spoon fed a film, people instantly know what it is. I like films that leave room to dream.

Next up: spoon fed philosophy.

Eraserhead is my most spiritual movie. No one understands when I say that, but it is.

I sure as shit missed that part. How about you?

These so-called bleak times are necessary to go through in order to get to a much, much better place.

Can that possibly include Trump 2.0?

Stupidity

“A tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice and I'll take A Midsummer Night's Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh.” Stephen King

We'll need a context, of course. Or is that always true?

What is it you most dislike? "Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition."

Here? Let's name names.

“Talk, talk, talk: the utter and heartbreaking stupidity of words.” William Faulkner

Tell that to the bots.

“You should never read just for "enjoyment." Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends' insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick "hard books." Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for god's sake, don't let me ever hear you say, "I can't read fiction. I only have time for the truth." Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of "literature"? That means fiction, too, stupid.” John Waters

Let's run that by Conchis.

“V-Day…if you need this one day in a year to show everyone else you truly care for 'your loved one' I think it’s quite stupid. I hate this commercialism. It’s all artificial, and has nothing to do with real love.” Jess C Scott

Unless you're selling the stuff.

“It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt.” Mark Twain

In other words, to post or not to post.

Just what we need: Another reminder of the gap between what we once dreamed our life would be and how it actually turned out instead. And smack dab in the middle of suburia no less. And this is the 1950s. That’s when it first began to dawn on some folks that the American Dream might not be all that it’s cracked up to be.

But we do live in a world where somebody has got to do all the shit details. And there are a hell of a lot more jobs like that than the kind you can actually be fulfilled doing. So we need the actors who are fulfilled to play the characters who are not so we can at least imagine things being different in our own lives vicariously.

Of course most of us just sort of stumble into this frame of mind. Or it creeps up on us over the years. Our only recourse then is to find distractions that take us away from it. Here they are still relatively young [and white and beautiful]. They still have actual options available to them. But here’s the catch says Frank: "Everything you’re saying makes sense…if I had a definite talent, if I were a writer or an artist."

Or some other marketable skill. A skill in other words you can both market and be fulfilled pursuing.

What is particularly surreal here though is the role the children play. Two of them. With a third on the way before being aborted. They will always be crucial [for most] in determining what options there are but here they just sort of float about in the background somewhere.


Revolutionary Road

Frank: So, what do you do?
April: I’m studying to be an actress. You?
Frank: I’m a longshoreman.
April: No, I mean, really.
Frank: I mean really, too. Although starting next Monday I’m doing something a little more glamorous.
April: What’s that?
Frank: Night cashier at a cafeteria.

Of course, they fall in love.

Frank [to April]: It strikes me that there’s a considerable amount of bullshit going on here. And there’s just a few things that I’d like to clear up. All right? Number one, it’s not my fault that the play was lousy. Okay? Number two, it sure as hell isn’t my fault that you didn’t turn out to be an actress, and the sooner you get over that little piece of soap opera, the better off we’re both going to be. Number three, I don’t happen to fit the role of dumb, insensitive suburban husband. You’ve been trying to lay that crap on me ever since we moved out here. And I’m damned if I’ll wear it!

So, who won?

Frank: Sweetheart, it’s just not very realistic, is all.
April: No, Frank. This is what’s unrealistic. It’s unrealistic for a man with a fine mind to go on working year after year at a job he can’t stand, coming home to a place he can’t stand, to a wife who’s equally unable to stand the same things. Do you want to know the worst part? Our whole existence here is based on this great premise that we’re special and superior to the whole thing. But we’re not. We’re just like everyone else. Look at us. We’ve bought into the same ridiculous delusion.

The American dream let's call it.

Frank: I work in the office. Actually, it’s…Well, it’s sort of a stupid job, really. There’s nothing interesting about it at all.
John: What do you do it for then?..I know, I know, it’s none of my business. And besides, I know the answer. You want to play house, you got to have a job. You want to play very nice house, very sweet house, then you’ve got to have a job you don’t like. Anyone comes along and says, “What do you do it for?” He’s probably on a four-hour pass from the state funny farm.

For example, anyone who has bills to pay.

Frank: Maybe we are running to Paris. We’re running from the hopeless emptiness of our whole life here, right?
John: Hopeless emptiness? Now you’ve said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness. Wow.

When did it first become hopeless for you?

April: If being crazy means living life as if it matters, then I don’t mind being completely insane.

I tried that once myself, in fact.

April: …supposing you’re right. You make all this money and we have this interesting life here. Won’t you still be wasting your life toiling away at a job you find ridiculous?

On the other hand, how much money and how interesting?

April: You don’t want to go now, do you?
Frank: Come on, April. Of course, I do.
April: No, you don’t. Because you’ve never tried at anything. And if you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail.
Frank: What the hell do you mean I don’t try? I support you, don’t I? I pay for this house. I work 10 hours a day at a job I can’t stand.
April: You don’t have to.
Frank: Bullshit! Look, I’m not happy about it. But I have the backbone not to run away from my responsibilities.
April: It takes backbone to lead the life you want, Frank.

How tricky is that for you?

April: Tell me the truth, Frank, remember that? We used to live by it. And you know what’s so good about the truth? Everyone knows what it is however long they’ve lived without it. No one forgets the truth, Frank, they just get better at lying.

On the job, in particular, for most.

Frank: April, you just said our daughter was a mistake. How do I know you didn’t try to get rid of her, or Michael for that matter?
April: No.
Frank: How do I know you didn’t try to flush our entire fucking family down the toilet?
April: No, that’s not true. Of course I didn’t.
Frank: But how do I know, April? A normal woman, a normal sane mother doesn’t buy a piece of rubber tubing to give herself an abortion so she can live out some kind of a goddamn fantasy!

Now, that's a good point. Too bad he keeps missing all the others.

April: Frank knows what he wants, he found his place, he’s just fine. Married, two kids, it should be enough. It is for him. And he’s right; we were never special or destined for anything at all…I saw a whole other future. I can’t stop seeing it. Can’t leave…can’t stay.

Bummer. To say the least.

Frank: Suppose we just say that people anywhere aren’t very well advised to have babies unless they can afford them.
John: Okay. Okay, it’s a question of money. Money’s a good reason. But it’s hardly ever the real reason. What’s the real reason? Wife talk you out of it or what? Little woman decide she isn’t quite ready to quit playing house? No, no, that’s not it. I can tell. She looks too tough and adequate as hell. Okay, then. It must’ve been you. What happened? What happened, Frank? You get cold feet? You decide you’re better off here after all? You figure it’s more comfy here in the old hopeless emptiness after all, huh? Oh, wow, that did it. Look at his face. What’s the matter, Wheeler? Am I getting warm? You know something? I wouldn’t be surprised if he knocked her up on purpose just so he could spend the rest of his life hiding behind a maternity dress. That way he’d never have to find out what he’s really made of!

I still don't know that. On the other hand, it was "beyond my control".

John: Big man you got there, April. Big family man. I feel sorry for you. Still, maybe you deserve each other. I mean, the way you look right now, I’m beginning to feel sorry for him, too. You must give him a pretty bad time if making babies is the only way he can prove he’s got a pair of balls.

John had once been in an insane asylum. Not that's he's any less perceptive about Frank and April.

Frank: Do you know what the definition of insanity is? It’s the inability to relate to another human being. It’s the inability to love.
April: So now I’m crazy because I don’t love you, right? Is that the point?
Frank: No! Wrong! You’re not crazy, and you do love me. That’s the point, April.
April: But I don’t. I hate you. You were just some boy who made me laugh at a party once, and now I loathe the sight of you. In fact, if you come any closer, if you touch me or anything, I think I’ll scream.
Frank: Frank: Oh, come on, stop this April.
[He touches her for an instant and she screams at the top of her lungs before walking away. He chases after her]
Frank: Fuck you, April! Fuck you and all your hateful, goddamn -
[He breaks a chair against a wall]
April: What are you going to do now? Are you going to hit me? To show me how much you love me?
Frank: Don’t worry, I can’t be bothered! You’re not worth the trouble it would take to hit you! You’re not worth the powder it would take to blow you up. You are an empty, empty, hollow shell of a woman. I mean, what the hell are you doing in my house if you hate me so much? Why the hell are you married to me? What the hell are you doing carrying my child? I mean, why didn’t you just get rid of it when you had the chance? Because listen to me, listen to me, I got news for you - I wish to God that you had!

Let's weep for their future. The characters I mean.

People do very strange things. Things in other words that, never in a million years, would you ever consider doing yourself. Why do they do them? Well, you can only begin by asking yourself, “how did they become who they think they are while I became who I think I am instead?”

And you know where I’d be going with that.

Jae-yeong is a prostitute. She looks to be all of 13 years old. So there are plenty of “clients”. Not only that but her best friend Yeo-jin [who looks to be about 15] is her pimp. What could possibly go wrong?

And yet it seems to explore prostitution as a far more ambiguous transaction. Jae-yeong appears to enjoy the encounters. She infuses the exchanges with more than just sex. The clients have names and jobs and personalities. Yeo-jin on the other hand – perhaps out of guilt that she’s not the one doing it – is basically repulsed by the fact that this is the only way they can get the money they need. In other words, it’s more complex then many would want it to be portrayed. Again, in part, because Jae-yeong looks like just “a kid”.

Or maybe because it appears that they love each other. There is a romantic, sexual relationahip between them. Or so it seems. What is particularly strange is how we learn absolutely nothing at all about Jae-yeong. With Yeo-jin we come to know her father. And we know her mother is dead. But Jae-yeong’s enigmatic behavior is just…there.

Why does she jump? What was she thinking? And why does her friend react to her death as she does? What sort of penance is that? What was she thinking?

The director was raised as a Catholic in a nation [Soth Korea] where Catholicism reflects about 10% of the population. Somehow the “lesson” here revolves around his own understanding of the relationship between morality and sin and guilt and…redemption? This is simply not how I think about these things myself.

Then Yeo-jin’s father finds out…and we have a whole other film. We go from the “samaritan girl” to “vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord.”

On the other hand, the ending is clearly ambiguous. Something about the need for all parents to [eventually] let go of their children. To allow them to fend for themselves out in what can be a cruel world.


Samaritan Girl [Samaria]

Jae-yeong: There was a prostitute in India named Vasumitra.
Yeo-jin: Vasumitra. What a pretty name.
Jae-yeong: But they say that after men slept with her, they all became faithful Buddhists.
Yeo-jin: How so?
Jae-yeong: Since she’s a prostitute, by having sex I guess. Very happy sex.
Yeo-jin: Doing that turns them into Buddhists?
Jae-yeong: Maybe it aroused some deep maternal love. You see, men are like babies when they have sex.

My guess: not all of them.

Jae-yeong: I’m not dirty.
Yeo-lin: It’s filthy. You don’t know where those guys have been. I’m sorry I pulled you into this. Let’s stop. I’m scared it will scar me forever.
Jae-yeong: It’s not like we’re committing murder. It’s not that hard on me. I have a lot of fun. And we need the money to get to Europe. Let’s wait a bit more.
Yeo-jin: You seem like you’re enjoying it.
[Jae-yeong smiles]

Though not for long.

Yeo-jin: What’s with you?!
Jae-yeong: What’s wrong with him buying us dinner?
Yeo-jin: You wanna eat with him after he used you?
Jae-yeong: Used me how?
Yeo-jin: They’re all filthy bastards!
Jae-yeong: Don’t say that. I’m the one who was with him. He’s such a good guy. He’s a musician. He even sang for me. Think all we do is have sex?

It's still the bottom line though.

Yeo-jin [to her dying friend]: Jae-yeong, stop smiling. There is nothing to smile at. Stop smiling now! Stop smiling!

She was smiling when she jumped too. Why? What is being conveyed by Kim here?

Client: I feel like I’m ten years younger. The hell with morals. Isn’t this happiness?
Yeo-jin: Was it also like this with Jae-yeong?
Client: It feels exactly the same. The ame for both of your smiles.
Yeo-jin: Jae-yeong is dead. She jumped out of that window, and her head cracked open.
Client [startled] Really?

Really. And supposedly it's all based on an actual true story. Then she gives him his money back. Why, he asks, shouldn’t I be giving you money? Because I don’t need it anymore, she replies. Then he becomes like the Buddhist. Just as Jae-yeong predicted. Same with all the others.

Yeo-jin’s “client”: Why are you blocking me in? Move your car now.
Yeong-ki [Yeo-jin’s father, who is also a police detective]: How about a punch for every lie we make. I’ll ask first. Where were you just now?
Client: Why do I have to answer that to you?
Yeong-ki: One scond, two seconds…
Client: I was at a motel with a girl, so what?
Yeong-ki: How old was the girl? One second, two second…
[client says nothing]
Yeong-ki [louder]: Who old was the girl?! One second, two seconds…
[slaps client in the face]
Client: What the hell are you doing?!
Yeong-ki: How old was the girl?
[he slaps him again…and again]
Client: Who the hell are you?!
Yeong-ki [slapping him]: Who do you think I am? Who do you think I am?!
[slaps him again]
Yeong-ki: Get the hell out of here. Before I kill you.

Though he is just getting started.

Described as, “NOT your grandmother’s Scrabble game.” Not even close. This is a film about competitive Scrabble. In other words, the folks here are obsessed not only with the game itself but with perfecting ways in which to win the North American Championship.

Like, say, memorizing all the words the folks in charge of these things allow to be used in competitive play.

These guys spend hours and hours and hours and hours doing this thing.

But this sort of film really wouldn’t work unless the filmmakers zeroed in on the really weird players. There is just something about them that has less to do with Scrabble than the way their brains are wired…wired, well, different from ours.

So are the words used. You can peruse the game boards at the competitive level and barely recognize any of them. Weird and obscure words that really do exist but are hardly ever actually used in the course of, say, living your life.

Also, these matches are timed. You start out with 25 minutes. Go past that and your points start to tumble.

And don’t ever expect to get rich here. Back in 2004 when the documentary came out the biggest prize at the biggest tournament of them all was $25,000. Though you did get to appear on the Today show. Most of the lesser tournaments pay out at less than a $1,000. Still, one can only try to imagine what these guys would put themselves through if the top prizes were closer to 6 figures.

The thing about Scrabble of course is the mysterious relationship between skill and luck. There are all sorts of things you can do to get better at it. But if you keep drawing shitty tiles you ain’t going to win.

Here are the current Scrabble game records if you want to dive into it headfirst yourself: https://www.scrabbleplayers.org/w/Records


Word Wars: Tiles and Tribulations on the Scrabble Circuit

Scrabble player: You see, in this game you can beat God if you have the right tiles.

You know, if He lets you.

Narrator: The game you are about to see is not your grandmother’s Scrabble. Unless your grandmother knows all the Q without U words and can anagram Eric Clapton into narcoleptic.

Just for the record: https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordfin ... -without-u

Joel: With me I do have to see the letters. But I visualize them floating around in a jumble in front of me…like just out in the air. Then they somehow just sort themselves out. Am I a genius? No, I don’t think I am. I have just developed one skill beyond what most people would dream of. But it is not a skill that most people would pay you to develop.

Now that's a crying shame.

Stefan: With a lot of these Scrabble players when they say they haven’t been studying it means they have been doing nothing but studying. They’ve got like different places in their brain where they study British words and the American words. It’s an almost unbelievably impossible task.

Though for some here, no doubt, it's a piece of cake.

Marlon: Word meanings are absolutely useless in the Scrabble environment. When I was going through writing down the words I did not know, I started with definitions but when you begin to read the definitions if you are sane at all it will drive you slowly insane.

Then the words that are absolutely meaningless here.

Jan Dixon: There has never been more than 6 women in the top 50 players, and there has been as few as 3. The theory is that the men are always a little more competitive, a little bit more of their ego is riding on it. A lot men, if they’ve got that strong ego and they can’t maintain that level, they quit playing.

And the equivalent of that here. Only they never quit posting.

Joe: In 1978 the Scrabble dictionary was published for the first time. It dawned on me that if I get in on this it is going to be really big. I can go to the top. I took a job as a night watchman and started to study Scrabble 4 or 5 hours a night. So when I won I felt the universe was telling me what to do and I was doing it.

Scrabble and AI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maven_(Sc ... 0in%201986.

Matt: People are so pathetic. I mean I want to have a good life but beyond that I don’t give a fuck what happens to this planet. I mean blowing up is too good for this planet. People should just suffer, suffer, suffer. I’m still trying to work it out so that I’ll be the one causing most of the suffering.

Sound familiar?

John Williams [director of the National Scrabble Association]: To end controversies the official Scrabble words dictionary was created. Originally using the top five dictionaries of North America. The offensive word controversy – the “cleansing of the dictionary” – was the worst experience I have gone through…A Holocaust survivor was playing Scrabble. He happened to notice the word “Jew” as a verb and just went berzerk.

Pick two:
1] memes
2] genes

John Williams: What about “dickhead”? What about “putz”? Then we got to words like “tup”. Tup means to have intercourse with a sheep. I was in a meeting with Hasbro and someone said he was looking in the list of words and I noticed the word tup was in there. I said that it meant for a ram to have intercourse with a sheep not a couple of farm boys.

Solution? They created two dictionaries. One for the “family” and the other for tournament play.

Marlon: “Bemeant”? That has no goddamn business being a word.

You know, like dasein.

Marlon [after exchanging five tiles – A,A,A,E,A – for five new ones – A,A,A,E,I]: Shit happens? Is that the answer, shit happens? Why does it have to happen to me, the broke motherfucker.

If he had won the game he would have been contending for the $25,000. Instead, he finished 8th and won $800.

Marshall McLuhan

Most of our assumptions have outlived their uselessness.

Assuming that's true of course.

We don't know who discovered water, but we know it wasn't the fish.

On the other hand, who thinks that it was?

Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery.
The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.

Not counting all the exceptions of course.

I am an intellectual thug who has been slowly accumulating a private arsenal with every intention of using it. In a mindless age every insight takes on the character of a lethal weapon. Every man of good will is the enemy of society.

You tell me.

...the only people who have proof of their sanity are those who have been discharged from mental institutions...

Well, not counting all those who just end up in prison.

Schizophrenia may be a necessary consequence of literacy.

If you get his drift. And I actually believe that I do.

There are white women who will talk about their hair. And then there are black women who will talk about their hair. Not necessarily the same thing at all.

But let’s be blunt. In today’s world lots and lots and lots of black women want to be able to talk about their hair as though they were white women. Or so that is what Chris Rock sometimes seems to be saying here.

Just try to imagine the reaction in the United States of America if next week Michelle Obama went out in public sporting a great big Afro? Come on, we all know that ain’t gonna happen. Or we are pretty darn certain it won’t.

Almost all celebrity black woman have “white hair”. And they spend a small fortune [and endless hours] maintaining it week in and week out.

For me, all this revolves around the “beauty industry”, which I deem to be part and parcel of a shallow, narcissistic culture in which the focus is always on the surface of things. It’s all bullshit to me. But black women seem to have been particularly suckered into all this. Over and again there seem to be women here who practically go bankrupt paying for their hair.

I think in part the message here is just that: that black women have been sold a bill of goods about their hair. That, in other words, they have been duped into buying into the idea that their own natural hair is inferiour to “white” hair. The racism here is just kind of hard to miss. But then there is the simply surreal journey of hair from India to, say, Los Angeles. You have to see it to believe it. From God to gold. Yet Indian hair itself comes from folks of color. Their faces are brown but their hair is white!

Or maybe it’s just me and my own prejudices about hair. Personally, I can’t stand the so-called “big hair look”. And it’s everywhere here.


Good Hair

Chris Rock: These are my daughters, Lola and Zahra, the most beautiful girls in the world. And even though I tell them they’re beautiful every single day, sometimes it’s just not enough. Just yesterday, Lola came into the house crying and said, “Daddy, how come I don’t have good hair?” Gee, I wonder how she came up with that idea?

So, does she have good hair now?

Nia Long: Well, there’s always this sort of pressure within the black community, like, “Oh, if you have good hair, you’re prettier or better than the brown-skin girl that wears the Afro or the dreads or the natural hairstyle.” The whiter, the brighter the better. And that’s a thing that causes great dissension within the black community and with black women.

Pick two:
1] victims
2] fools

Bernard Brooner: With certain products blacks index triple what the white market does. We’re 12% of the population, but we buy 80% of the hair.

What to make of that?

Scott Julion [hair stylist]: If you went under the counter in a black woman’s bathroom, she’s got about thirty or forty bottles of different things.

No, really, thirty or forty bottles of what exactly?

Chris: Relaxer. The closest thing we have to a nap antidote. For all you white people out there that don’t know what it is, you name a black woman, any black woman, no matter how famous or infamous, they’ve either had their hair relaxed, or they are having their hair relaxed now. And a lot of black men too.

Of course, that's still true.
Right?

Chris: How old were you when you first got your relaxer?
Maya Angelou: Oh god. I was about seventy.
Chris: Seventy? You went your whole life…
Maya: Not my whole life, I’m still alive!

Well, at the time anyway.

The “burn” of the “creamy crack”:
T-Pain: The burn of a perm is, I think, the most excruciating burn. I think it is hotter than fire.
Al Sharpton: Especially the first time. I mean, the first time you feel like your whole skull is on fire, and why are you doing this?
Ice-T: If you have maybe a pimple or something in your scalp, and that stuff gets in, it’ll start to burn. But usually if you’re trying to relax your hair, it’s kind of like a torture session. It’s like you want it to be as straight as possible, so you feel it burning, but you be like, “Just a little longer. Just a little longer. Just a little longer. WASH IT OUT!”
Dr. Maclin-Carroll: The burning of the skin, the stripping, you know, the oozing, the weeping, all the things that go along with stripping that superficial epidermis off the skin.
Andre Harrell: You can get a burn and scabs around your head because it is suppose to take the knottiness out of your hair…but if you leave it in too long you just get nappy scab. You are left just walking around twisted with these scabs on the front of your head.

Then Chris finds a chemist to tell the world just how ghastly sodium hydroxide can be to the human body. Both inside and out.

The tumbling tumbleweave:
Ice-T: I think the horrific part of the hair thing was when I started to find out, you know, what they was doing. You know, because it was a mystery early, and then I was like, okay, if it’s a wig, do they take it off? They’re like, No. How’s it stay on then, glue? Sometimes, they said, and then they sew it. They sew it to what I asked? It was like a secret society…

And these women can sit in the chair at the beauty parlor for 6 to 8 hours. And the cost? From $1,000 to $5,000 or more.

Actor: I’m famous for switching my weaves once every month 'cause I get bored.
Chris: Is that $18,000 a year?
Actor: Yeah, about that.

Is that more or less than you pay?

Woman [to Chris]: Throughout my life I’ve spent over $150,000 on weaves.

Hair weaves. I've heard of them but I really wasn't sure what they actually were:

https://www.google.com/search?q=hair+we ... URT-reRWmz

Chris [at the Bronner Hair Show]: It may be all about looking good for the hair show contestants, but it’s all about cash for the 1,800 hair booth vendors.

It still is, I'm guessing.

Chris [at the show]: You guys are the heads of the Black Owned Beauty Supplier Association.
BOBSA head: Most of the black owned suppliers have already sold their companies to various white owned companies like Revlon and L’Oreal.
Chris: Do black people own anything in this room?
BOBSA head: We are a cluster of black manufacturers. And these two rows and this row here are black entrepreneurs.
Chris: So in this whole convention, only two rows are owned by black people? Most of it is…what?
BOBSA head: Most of it is, I think, Asian.
Chris: Is it hard for black people to get into the black hair business?
BOBSA head: Yes, yes. It is very hard.

Apparently there are only 4 “out of hundreds of companies” in the hair business that are owned by blacks.

Black man: In the black community, the hairdressers are superstars. They are bigger than doctors, lawyers.

Said without a shred of irony.

Chris: In trying to understand the world of black hair, I’ve been all over the world, and I’ve talked to all sorts of people. I’ve seen sodium hydroxide in its rawest form and in the heads of four year old girls. I’ve seen some people pay thousands of dollars for hair and others give it away to God. I’ve learned that the black hair industry generates billions of dollars…mostly for white people and Asians. I’ve talked to the best hairdressers in the country and watched a thrilling hair competition. I’ve seen black women work hard in their own businesses to give other black women straight hair. So what do I tell my daughters? I tell them that the stuff on top of their heads is nowhere near as important as the stuff inside their heads.

You know, in the best of all possible worlds. And not the one we live in today.

Ice-T: I just think that women shouldn’t point fingers at other women for whatever they’re doing to enhance their bodies. Other than that, do whatever makes you feel good, because, trust me, if a woman ain’t happy with herself, she going to bring nothing but pain to every-fuckin’-body around her.

And of course the beauty industry has nothing at all to do with influencing how she comes to think about that.

He is a monk. But he is also an iconoclast. And since he is a character created by Umberto Eco you can expect him to probe the boundaries of religion [and God] from a considerably more astute intellectual vantage point. Recognizing however that even the most subtle of minds will always get stuck here. There is, after all, only so far into these mysteries that the mind can go. And, so far, that seems to include every mind there has ever been. Meaning of course every mind that I have come across.

It is the case that throughout the history of the Catholic church [and all of the others I suspect] there has always been this debate regarding the role that wealth plays [or ought not to play] in its teachings. Even today there are rumors of the new Pope going out at night among the flock and givng money to the poor. But let’s face it, the preponderance of ecclesiastics have more than made their peace with their capitalist brethren. Wealth is simply rationalized.

But back then capitalism was still just on the horizon.

And then there is the role of reason. Obviously, with respect to God one could be charged with being too reasonable. And especially back then. But throughout the march of history that line is always shifting back and forth. As was apparently the line regarding…laughter? It seems the Good Book is bereft of instances where Christ had laughed. But, as Willam is quick to point out, it does not strictly forbid it either. In other words, for all we know Christ may well have chuckled from time to time. Just don’t suggest this out loud.

As for the sins of the flesh? Oh yeah.

Look for Aristotle’s Second Book of Poetics. If you can find it.

“The Girl” (Valentina Vargas) is the only female character in the film.

For the wordless scene in which the girl seduces Adso, Jean-Jacques Annaud didn’t explain to Christian Slater what his co-star Valentina Vargas would be doing so as to elicit a more authentic performance from him.

Jean-Jacques Annaud admitted to casting the ugliest actors he could get because he wanted the characters to appear “real”, based on the men in the village where he lived.

Nowadays, according to the director, the only place where manuscripts and books are made with the same techniques and materials depicted in the movie is the abbey of Praglia on Padua (Veneto, Italy). It takes 6 months to a year to create a single page. When filming on the Eberbach monastery, the German police was assigned to protect the manuscripts and books used on the movie. Even with these measures, a key page was stolen; it’s the one that appears on a close up on the desk of the missing monk, showing a capital “B”. The shot used in the movie was made a year after this incident, the time that it took to make a new page, two weeks before the release.

Bernardo Gui is a historical person who was indeed an inquisitor at the time the story is set - he was quite a hard-working one too, sentencing some 900 people and executing at least 42 of them during his 15 years in office. The real Bernardo Gui, however, was not killed as depicted in the movie - he died four years after the events of the film, in 1331, at the castle of Laroux. IMDb


The Name of the Rose

William [to Adso]: That is Ubertino de Casale…one of the great spiritual leaders of our Order. Come. Many revere him as a living saint…but others would have him burnt as a heretic. His book on the poverty of the clergy is not favorite reading in the papal palaces. So, now he lives in hiding, like an outlaw.

So, does that surprise you?

William [watching peasants clamor among the trash thrown from the Abbey]: Another generous donation by the Church to the poor.

Of course, that's only until they inherit the Earth.

Adso: Suicide? Do you think that this is a place abandoned by God?
William: Have you ever known a place where God would have felt at home?

Other than the Vatican?

Adso: And what was the word you both kept mentioning?
William: Penitenziagite.
Adso: What does it mean?
William: It means that the hunchback undoubtedly was once a heretic. Penitenziagite was a rallying cry of the dolcinites.
Adso: Dolcinites? Who were they, master?
William: Those who believed in the poverty of Christ.
Adso: So do we Franciscans.
William: But they also declared that everyone must be poor, so they slaughtered the rich. Ha! You see, Adso, the step between ecstatic vision and sinful frenzy is all too brief.
Adso [looking at the Hunchback]: Well, then, could he not have killed the translator?
William: No. No, fat bishops and wealthy priests were more to the taste of the dolcinites, hardly a specialist of Aristotle.

These guys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulcinians

Jorge: Laughter is a devilish wind which deforms, uh, the lineaments of the face and makes men look like monkeys.
William: Monkeys do not laugh. Laughter is particular to men.
Jorge: As is sin. Christ never laughed.
William: Can we be so sure?
Jorge: There is nothing in the Scriptures to say that he did.
William: And there’s nothing in the Scriptures to say that he did not.

So, did He? And, if so, laugh at what?

Adso: Master? Have you ever been in love?
William: In love? Yeah, many times.
Adso: You were?
William: Yes, of course. Aristotle, Ovid, Vergil, Thomas Aquinas…
Adso: No, no, no. I meant with a…
William: Oh. Ah. Are you not confusing love with lust?
Adso: Am I? I don’t know. I want only her own good. I want her to be happy. I want to save her from her poverty.
William: Oh, dear.

I forget: did he?

William [after finding the secret room of books in the tower]: How many more rooms? Ah! How many more books? No one should be forbidden to consult these books freely.
Adso: Perhaps they are thought to be too precious, too fragile.
William: No, it’s not that, Adso. It’s because they often contain a wisdom that is different from ours and ideas that could encourage us to doubt the infallability of the word of God… And doubt, Adso, is the enemy of faith.

And who doubts that?

William: She is already burnt flesh, Adso. Bernardo Gui has spoken: she is a witch.
Adso: But that’s not true, and you know it!
William: I know. I also know that anyone who disputes the verdict of an Inquisitor is guilty of heresy.

Heads they win, tails you lose.

William: I too was an Inquisitor, but in the early days, when the Inquisition strove to guide, not to punish. And once I had to preside at a trial of a man whose only crime was to have translated a Greek book that conflicted with the Holy Scriptures. Bernardo Gui wanted him condemned as a heretic; I - acquitted the man. Then Bernardo Gui accused me of heresy, for having defended him. I appealed to the Pope. I - I was put in prison, tortured, and… and I recanted.
Adso: What happened then?
William: The man was burned at the stake and I am still alive.

Torture and the truth. Going all the way back to the Big bang.

The Pope’s representative: Beloved brethren of the Franciscan Order…our Holy Father, the Pope, has authorized me and these, his faithful servants, to speak on his behalf. The question’s not whether Christ was poor but whether the Church should be poor! You, Franciscans, wish to see the clergy renounce its possessions and surrender its richness. The abbeys dissipate their sacred treasures and hand over their fertile acres to the serfs. Thereby depriving the Church of the resources needed to combat unbelievers and wage war on the infidel.

See…anything can be ratonalized.

William: My venerable brother, there are many books that speak of comedy. Why does this one fill you with such fear?
Jorge: Because it’s by Aristotle.
William [chasing after Jorge who runs with the Second Book of Poetics by Aristotle intending to destroy it]: But what is so alarming about laughter?
Jorge: Laughter kills fear, and without fear there can be no faith because without fear of the Devil, there is no more need of God.
William: But you will not eliminate laughter by eliminating that book.
Jorge: No, to be sure, laughter will remain the common man’s recreation. But what will happen if, because of this book, learned men were to pronounce it admissible to laugh at everything? Can we laugh at God? The world would relapse into chaos! Therefore, I seal that which was not to be said.

Sealing stuff here.

Yuval Noah Harari

People rarely appreciate their ignorance, because they lock themselves inside an echo chamber of like-minded friends and self-confirming news feeds, where their beliefs are constantly reinforced and seldom challenged.

Bingo! Objectivism in a nutshell!!

Anyone who has ever dealt with the tax authorities, the educational system or any other complex bureaucracy knows that the truth hardly matters. What’s written on your form is far more important.

Maybe, but wait until Elon Trump fires them all and puts Wall Street in charge. Of taxes among other things.

Earlier traditions usually formulated their theories in terms of stories. Modern science uses mathematics.

What exactly do we use here?

Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions to defend slightly different interpretations of the religion of love and compassion.

See I told you.

The danger is that if we invest too much in developing AI and too little in developing human consciousness, the very sophisticated artificial intelligence of computers might only serve to empower the natural stupidity of humans.

Here? I'll name names if you will.

As Nietzsche put it, if you have a why to live, you can bear almost any how. A meaningful life can be extremely satisfying even in the midst of hardship, whereas a meaningless life is a terrible ordeal no matter how comfortable it is.

The former, yeah, sure, but the latter...?

Of course the state’s executioner will be an ordinary man. That makes the story all the more intriguing. The gap between the quotidian and the extraordinary. Things he does from day to day [ho hum] and the things he does on special occasions [snap!]

It also points out the obvious: that any one of us could do it. It only takes a particular sequence of events to unfold in a particular way.

But, let’s face it, while some would do the task and then tell themselves "it’s just a job”, others would relish in it. Over and over again putting another man [and the occasional woman] to death. And being paid to do it! To hear them whimper and plead…frightened out of their wits!!

Pierrepoint however wants only to carry on in the grand tradition of his father and his uncle. Or so it seems. And did he ever. He hung 608 men and women. But that includes the surge of war criminals. 50 a week for a while there. Then he comes back home a local hero. The man who hung the beast of Belsen. But the political winds are changing. And not in his favor.

He was the executioner of Ruth Ellis. She was the subject of the film Dance With a Stranger above. But did he really have to hang his best friend? And did it really unfold as portrayed here?

You can’t help but wonder: What must it be like to know the exact moment that you are going to die? And to know this for hours or days in advance.

Despite the title Pierrepoint was not Britain’s last hangman. He retired in the mid 1950s, shortly after executing Ruth Ellis. Britain never had a “last hangman”, as the last two executions before suspension of capital punishment were carried out in different cities at the same time. As the last two people executed were both guilty of the murder of John West, it was decided to carry out sentence at the same time in Aug 1964. In Nov 1965, people were still being sentenced to death.

As per the promo material, and the DVD insert, this film is “based on a true story,” however, it might be more appropriate to describe the film as “based on true events,” since the story is rather liberal with the actual facts of Pierrepont’s, and other character’s lives and circumstances. Big picture, true, small picture, not terribly accurate or precise. IMDb


Pierrepoint -- The Last Hangman

Warden: So what do we do? We exploit it! We get him in here and dropped before he’s had time to recover from the shock, before he can struggle or fight, and before he even knows what’s happening. No sense in prolonging the agony, for him or for you.

Pierrepoint has it down to a science. Though never down to an art.

Warden: The heavier the man, the shorter the drop you give him. The weaker the neck, the shorter the drop. Get it wrong and you’ll pull his head off. Pierrepoint. Male, 24 years old, five foot six, 160 pounds in his clothes.
Pierrepoint: Occupation?
Warden: Manual laborer.
Pierrepoint: A good strong neck. Table says six foot three. I’d give him six eleven.
Warden: So would I. Good.

See, down to a fucking science!

Charlie: Eight hours, 20 minutes, Albert. That’s all the time he has left. Ticking away. He gets involved with some old tart. She pushes him over the edge. He winds up in here waiting for us to come knocking on his door…I wonder if he is looking at his watch.

His best fucking friend in all the world.

Warden: Fourteeen and a half seconds, Pierrepoint. Quite satisfactory.
Pierrepoint: Thank you, sir. I do try to take pride in my work.

What extraordinary skill do you take pride in?

Assistant: She did say something didn’t she?
Pierrepoint: Aye. She asked for her God. That’s nothing to do with me. It’s between her and her executioner. When I walk into that cell, I leave Albert Pierrepoint outside. I never mix the two. You have to be clear about the two. People are always wondering whether it’s possible to take a life and it not affect you. Written bloody books on it.
Assistant: What do they say?
Pierrepoint: I don’t know. It’s not me taking their life, is it? It’s the government who wants these people executed, not you or me. That’s the way I see it. I never concern myself with what they’ve done. It doesn’t matter to me.

You want surreal? All the while he is saying this, he is shown disrobing a woman he just hung. Then he is shown washing her naked body. She is still hanging by the rope with the hood around her head.

Assistant: Why can’t they let the mortuary do this part?
Pierrepoint [while attending to Dorothea Waddingham’s lifeless body]: They wouldn’t take care of her. She paid the price; she’s innocent now.

You know, being philosophical.

Pierrepoint [to his new assistant]: I’m gonna bust 13 seconds tomorrow, Georgie. That was me father’s average.

He does: seven and a half seconds.

Assistant at war crimes executions: Lining someone up in your sights, pulling the trigger, well, that’s one thing. But standing with them on the gallows, both knowing what’s going to happen…I think it’s the knowing that is the worst part of it. The absolute certainty that they are going to die. Seeing it in their eyes. Still, it’s like you said. It’s not really us in here, is it?
Pierrepoint: Aye, that’s right, lad.
Assistant: Time for a brew?
Pierrepoint: No, we don’t want to fall behind.

They didn't.

Pierrepoint: Do you want to know what I did today? I hanged Tish. James Henry Corbitt, that was his name. You know, we never knew that. He murdered Jessie, you know. One night, he followed her to Liverpool, cheap hotel, his hands around her throat. If he can’t have her, nobody can. Another sad, sordid little story, like all the rest of them. And I just put a rope around his neck and hanged him for it.
[pause]
Pierrepoint: Well, say something. Don’t you want to know about it?
Annie: No.
Pierrepoint: Don’t you want to know what he looked like, what he said? Don’t you want to know what it felt like to take a friend and do that to him?
Annie [shaking her head]: No, what I was going to say was…er…I thought we could start doing flowers, keep a bunch of flowers behind the bar. And…and…what do you think?
Pierrepoint: I’ve done for him, Annie. Don’t you understand? I’ve killed him, and for what? For money. Dirty, bloody money! I looked into his eyes, Annie.
Annie: Stop it, please.
Pierrepoint: He saw me. He thanked me.
Annie: Stop it! We don’t talk about it, Albert. That’s what we said! That’s what we always agreed!
Pierrepoint [exploding]: WELL, I WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT NOW!!
[he opens his ledger of death]
Pierrepoint: Look, here. Of course it was me. It’s been me all along. I’ve done for them. Me. At least they killed in jealousy, haste or passion. What about me? What can I say? I’ve murdered the bloody lot of them. Look. Hundreds of them. Hundreds and hundreds of them…

On the other hand, fuck the Nazis?

Title card: “The fruit of my experience has this bitter aftertaste…Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge.” Albert Pierrepoint, 1974

As though that were just a small and insignificant thing?

I don’t believe in angels. Not here in America or anywhere else. But I know there are any number of folks who don’t…but wish they could. For eample, folks who don’t but have become afflicted with AIDS. And, in particular, back in the 1980s. Back then it was surely one of the most ghastly death sentences that one could ever be burdened with. Lots of folks were afraid to be in the same room with anyone diagnosed as HIV positive…and they had barely begun to acquire and accumulate the medications we have today. So, sure, if you could believe in angels and all that is attached to them, it might give you some consolation, some hope for the future.

In this film, as Harper Pitt points out, “weird stuff happens.” But they are all just devices used to explore the dawn of the AIDS epidemic in an age when reactionaries ruled the roost in Washington. AIDS and Ronald Reagan. Does that ring a bell?

One thing becomes crystal clear. There was no crystal clarity back then when folks were actually coming down with this terrifying new reality in the world. It is was the literal embodiment of the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty. An utterly existential quandary regarding how one ought to live one’s life. It’s the difference between being a deontologist in theory [here for example] and fitting that into the excruciating ambiguities of actual human experience. There are some truly gut wrenching exchanges here throughout the film.

Still, how much more powerful it might have been without all the angels and ghosts and ancestors from the past. What really was the point of all that? Part Biblical bullshit and part New Age mumbo jumbo. Maybe it’s all just the butt of a joke but I could have done without it.

The ending was straight out of the liberal lexicon. I can almost appreciate why some reactionaries respond to it as they do.


Angels in America

Prior: KS, baby. Lesion number one. The wine-dark kiss of the angel of death. I’m a lesionaire. Foreign lesion. The American lesion. Lesionaire’s disease.
Louis: Stop.
Prior: My troubles are lesion.
Louis: Will you stop!
Prior: Don’t you think I’m handling this well? I’m going to die.

As well as can be expected in this fucking world.

Louis: Rabbi, what does the Holy Writ say about someone who abandons someone he loves at a time of great need?
Rabbi: Why would a person do such a thing?
Louis: Because he has to. Maybe this person can’t incorporate sickness into his sense of how things are supposed to go. Maybe vomit and sores and disease really frighten him. Maybe he isn’t so good with death.

That can change everything.

Prior [in drag]: One wants. But one so seldom gets what one wants. Does one? No. One does not. One gets fucked over. One dies at 30. Robbed of decades of majesty.
[throws down his wig]
Prior: Fuck this shit! I look like a corpse. A corpsette. Oh my queen; you know you’ve hit rock-bottom when even drag is a drag.

Let's run this by, well, you know.

Harper: It’s terrible. Mormons are not supposed to be addicted to anything. I’m a Mormon.
Prior: I’m a homosexual.
Harper: Oh. In my church, we don’t believe in homosexuals.
Prior: In my church, we don’t believe in Mormons.

Some things will just never change, will they?

Harper: I don’t understand this. If I didn’t ever see you before, and I don’t think I did, then I don’t think you should be here in this hallucination because in my experience the mind which is where hallucinations come from shouldn’t be able to make anything up that wasn’t there to start with that didn’t enter it from experience from the real world. Imagination can’t create anything new can it? It only recycles bits and pieces from the world and reassembles them into visions. Am I making sense right now?
Prior: Given the circumstances, yes.
Harper: So when we think we’ve escaped the unbearable ordinariness and, well, untruthfulness of our lives it’s really only the same old ordinariness and falseness rearranged into the appearance of novelty and truth. Nothing unknown is knowable.

Fit yourself in there somewhere, and then get back to us.

Harper: Sometimes you can see things like how sick you are. Do you see anything about me?
Prior: Yes, you are amazingly unhappy.
Harper: Big deal, you meet a valium addict, you figure out she’s unhappy…that doesn’t count. I want something else. Something surprising.
Prior: Something suprising?
Harper: Yes
Prior: Your husband’s a homo.

Either he's afflicted or he's not.

Mr. Lies [to Harper]: Respect the delicate ecology of your delusions.

So, how's that working out for you?

Prior: I usually say, “Fuck the truth,” but mostly, the truth fucks you.

Or nearly mostly.

Harper: I burned dinner.
Joe: I’m sorry.
Harper: Not my dinner, my dinner was fine. Your dinner. I put it back in the oven and turned everything up as high as it could go and I watched 'til it burned black. It’s still hot, very hot, want it?
Joe: You didn’t have to do that.
Harper: I know, it just seemed like the kinda thing a mentally-deranged sex-starved pill-popping housewife would do.

I've never met one who didn't.

Louis: Jews don’t have any clear textual guide to the afterlife. I mean even that it exists…For us it’s not the verdict that count, it’s the act of judgment. That’s why I can never be a lawyer. In court, all that matters is the verdict…It’s the shaping of the law that matters, not its execution. It should be the questions and shape of a life, its total complexity, gathered, arranged and considered which matters in the end. Not some stamp of salvation or damnation which disperses all the complexity in some satisfying little decision.

Try to even imagine a legal system derived from all that. And Louis personifies the cold, calculating intellectual. The pedant. The abstractionist.

Roy Cohn: AIDS. Homosexual. Gay. Lesbian. You think these are names that tell you who a person sleeps with, but they don’t tell you that.
Henry: No?
Roy Cohn: No. Like all labels they tell you one thing, and one thing only: Where does an individual so identified fit into the food chain, the pecking order? Not ideology or sexual taste, but something much simpler: clout. Not who I fuck or who fucks me, but who will come to the phone when I call, who owes me favors. This is what a label refers to. Now to someone who does not understand this, a homosexual is what I am because I have sex with men, but really this is wrong. A homosexual is somebody who, in 15 years of trying cannot get a pissant anit-discrimination bill through the city council. A homosexual is somebody who knows nobody and who nobody knows. Who has zero clout. Does this sound like me Henry?

Then this part: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/202 ... e-to-power

Joe: I think we ought to pray. Ask God for help. Ask him together.
Harper: God won’t talk to me. I have to make up people to talk to me.
Joe: You have to keep asking.
Harper: I forgot the question? Oh, yeah. God, is my husband a homo?
Joe: Stop it! Stop it! I’m warning you! Does it make any difference that I might be one thing deep within? No matter how wrong or ugly that thing is so long as I have fought with everything I have to kill it? What do you want from me? What do you want from me Harper, more than that? For God’s sake, there’s nothing left. I’m a shell. There’s nothing left to kill. As long as my behaviour is what I know it has to be, decent, correct that alone in the eyes of God.
Harper: No, no, not that. That’s Utah talk, Mormon talk. I hate it, Joe. Tell me, say it.
Joe: All I will say is that I’m a very good man who has worked very hard to become good and you wanna destroy that. You wanna destroy me but I am not gonna let you do that.

Well, "sometimes you eat the bar and sometimes the bar eats you".

Roy Cohn [to Henry]: I have sex with men. But unlike nearly every other man of whom this is true, I bring the guy I’m screwing to the White House and President Reagan smiles at us and shakes his hand.

Of course, he's dead now. Unless it's another Roy Cohn.

Martin Heller: We have a new agenda, and finally, a new leader. They got back the Senate but we have the courts. By the 90s the Supreme Court will be solid Republican appointees, and the federal bench, Republican judges like landmines everywhere. Everywhere they turn. Affirmative action? Take it to court. Boom! Landmine. We’ll get our way on just about everything. Abortion, defense, Central America, family values, a live investment climate…It’s really the end of liberalism, Joe. The end of New Deal socialism. The end of ipso facto secular humanism. The dawning of a genuinely American political personality…modeled on Ronald Wilson Reagan.

And now on Donald Musk.

Martin Heller [to Joe]: It’s the fear of what comes after the doing that makes the doing hard to do.
Roy Cohn: Amen.
Martin Heller: But you can almost always live with the consequences.

And, as often as not, for some, fuck everyone else.

Louis: I’m dying.
Belize: You’re not dying. You just wish you were.

Tell me about it!
You too?

Roy [explaining to Joe why he wanted Ethel Rosenberg to get the death sentence]: I would have pulled the switch if they let me. Why? Because I hate traitors. I hate communists. Was it legal? Fuck legal. Not nice? Fuck nice. The Nation says I’m not nice? Fuck the Nation. Do you wanna be nice? Or you wanna be effective?

Anyone here ever manage to become both?

Prior: I had a wet dream.
Belize: Mmm. The Calvin Klein underwear man?
Prior: No, it was a woman.
Belize: Are you turnin’ straight on me?
Prior: An…unconventional woman!
Belize: Grace Jones?

You tell me: https://www.google.com/search?q=grace+j ... URT-reRWmz

Belize: This didn’t come from me and I don’t like you but let me tell you a thing or two. They have radiation for you tomorrow, for the sarcoma lesions and you don’t want to let them do that. Radiation will kill your T cells and you don’t have any you can afford to lose. So you tell the doctors no thanks. He won’t want to listen. Persuade him or he’ll kill you.
Roy Cohn: You’re just a fucking nurse. Why should I listen to you over my very qualified, very expensive Wasp doctor?
Belize: He’s not queer, I am.
Roy Cohn: You said thing or two. That’s one.
Belize: I don’t know what strings you pulled to get in on the AZT trials. But watch out for the double blind. They’ll want you to sign something that says they can give you M & Ms instead of the real drug. You’ll die, but they’ll get the kind of statistics they can publish in The New England Journal of Medicine. And you can’t sue them because you signed. If you don’t sign, no pills. So if you have any strings left, pull them. Everyone is put through the double blind and with this time’s against you. You can’t fuck around with placebos.
Roy Cohn: You hate me?
Belize: Yes.
Roy Cohn: So why are you telling me this?
Belize: I wish I knew.
Roy Cohn: You’re a butterfingers spook-faggot nurse. I think you have little reason to wanna help me.
Belize: Consider it solidarity. One faggot to another.

Sounds about right. And it is, right?

Roy Cohn: The worse thing about being sick in America is that you’re booted out of the parade. Americans have no use for the sick.

On the contrary, the medical industrial complex can't get enough of them. They just need to be loaded down with insurance.

Louis [to Joe]: The Republican Party. The Republican Party…I mean I hate the Democrats too…but the Republicans…half religious zealots wanting to control every breath every citizen takes and half ego anarchist, libertarian cowboys shrilling for no government.

Next up: RFK Jr. and bird flu?

Harper: In your experience of the world. How do people change?
Mormon Mother: Well it has something to do with God so it’s not very nice. God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can’t even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It’s up to you to do the stitching.
Harper: And then up you get. And walk around.
Mormon Mother: Just mangled guts pretending. That’s how people change.

In other words, not just existentially?

Belize: I hate America, Louis. I hate this country. Nothing but a bunch of big ideas and stories and people dying, and then people like you. The white cracker who wrote the National Anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word “free” to a note so high nobody could reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing on earth sounds less like freedom to me.

Click, of course.

Ethel Rosenberg [to a dying Roy Cohn]: I came here to forgive, but all I can do is take pleasure in your misery. Knowing that I would get to see you die, more terribly than I did. And you are. Cause you’re dying in shit, Roy. Defeated.
[leans in]
Ethel Rosenberg: And you could kill me…but you couldn’t ever defeat me…you never won. And when you die, all anyone will say is, “Better that he had never lived at all.”

I can certainly agree with that. But it's still no less a political prejudice.

Roy Cohn: Life is full of horror; nobody escapes, nobody; save yourself. Whatever pulls on you, whatever needs from you, threatens you. Don’t be afraid; people are so afraid; don’t be afraid to live in the raw wind, naked, alone… Learn at least this: What you are capable of. Let nothing stand in your way.

Prior: I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
Hannah: Well that’s a stupid thing to do.

Anyone here dare to disagree?