Category Archives: Uncategorized

‘The Possibility of an Island’ is world literature classic #110


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The Possibility of an Island is very much a philosophical novel, as is most of Michel Houellebecq‘s fiction. In this particular novel Houellebecq juxtaposes Plato’s soulmate theory to Saint Paul‘s ‘one flesh’ remark in the Epistle to the Ephesians, remarking that this ‘love craving’, this need for emotional symbiosis is the origin of much unhappiness.

In the words of Houellebecq:

“It was [Plato’s Symposium] that intoxicated Western mankind, mankind as a whole, which has inspired in it disgust at its condition of a rational animal, which had engendered in it a dream that it had taken two millennia to try and rid itself of, without completely succeeding.”

Below is Plato’s soulmate theory in which Zeus split the four legged and four armed primeval humans in two parts, giving birth to creatures who are forever searching for the other half, the soul mate, to reunite their flesh:

“[Primeval man had] … four hands and four feet, eight in all … they made an attack upon the gods … Zeus discovered a way [to punish them] … I will cut them in two … after the division the two parts of man, each desiring his other half … longing to grow into one … when one of the halves died and the other survived, the survivor sought another mate, man or woman as we call them … and clung to that … so ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making one of two, and healing the state of man … each of us … is always looking for his other half. Suppose Hephaestus … [was] to come to [a] pair who are lying side by side and to say to them … ‘do you desire to be wholly one … I am ready to melt you into one and let you grow together, so that being two you shall become one … if you were a single man?’ … there is not a man … who when he heard the proposal would deny … that this meeting and melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the very expression of his ancient need … and the reason is that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love.” —Plato’s Symposium

And this is Saint Paul’s remark in the Epistle to the Ephesians:

“For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.”

This is not the new flesh but the old flesh.

I never knew ‘Black Swan’ was a ‘body horror’ film

Above: Natalie Portman (as Nina) pulls a feather out of her shoulder.

Black Swan (2010) is a psychological thriller directed by Darren Aronofsky featuring body horror scenes (self-injury, Nina growing feathers) and an unreliable narrator.

It is World Cinema Classic #225.

P.S. The black swan is also a trope in philosophy.

‘Into the Wild’ is World Cinema Classic #224

Into the Wild is a 2007 American biographical drama survival film written and directed by Sean Penn, based on the travels of Christopher McCandless across North America and his life spent in the Alaskan wilderness in the early 1990s.

Depending on who you ask, Christopher McCandless was a Thoreau-like ‘back to nature!‘ hero or a simple-minded romantic.

See World Cinema Classics.

RIP Albert Maysles (1926 – 2015)

Albert Maysles was an American documentary filmmaker best-known for the documentaries Gimme Shelter (1970) Grey Gardens (1975).

He is best known for the direct cinema/cinéma vérité – documentaries he made with his brother.

You can watch Gimme Shelter[1] and Grey Gardens[2] in their totalities on YouTube. And Salesman[3] too (practically).

If your new to the Maysles, I’d start with Grey Gardens, the story of an eccentric mother and daugther.

“All About Money” is WMC#951

As I’ve mentioned before, I have been working on a musical top 1000 since 2007. It’s almost finished, another 50 or so tracks to go. Let’s call it my musical fingerprint.

It has come to my attention that a certain Dan Snaith, who works under the name Caribou, has been doing the same thing.

He recently published his top 1000.

There is about two to three percent overlap with my list.

Not on my list was “All About Money” (above), a queer but wonderful composition by an eighties studio project called ‘Spontaneous Overthrow’.

“All About Money” is also on the compilation Personal Space (Electronic Soul 1974 – 1984).

Keywords are cosmic, druggy, weird.

Drawing the contours of the ‘American fantastique’

“The Eye of the Beholder” (1960) is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. Its theme is aesthetic relativism.

It is a prime example of the American fantastique, the fantastique being a sensibility which is a sibling of horror, fantasy and SF, and child of speculative fiction.

You can watch the full episode (only about twenty minutes) here[1].

I previously mentioned this episode here[2].

10/10

RIP Lasse Braun (1936 – 2015)

RIP Lasse Braun (1936 – 2015).

He was one of the last living protagonists of the ‘porno chic‘ era. The only two survivors now are Radley Metzger (1929) and Tinto Brass (1933).

Here are two clips from Youtube (of all places)

An animated short film, a collaboration of Siné and Braun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LKS2O7W5v8

And this rarity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwUHjlbiYew

Body Love, a film by Braun starring Catherine Ringer, with music by Klaus Schulze.

I previously paid attention to Lasse Braun here[1].

“The Double’ is World Cinema Classic #218

The Double is a 2013 dark comedy written and directed by relative newcomer Richard Ayoade, starring Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) and Mia Wasikowska. The film is based on the novella The Double by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It is about a man driven to mental breakdown when he is usurped by a doppelgänger.

“Ayoade has cited Orson Welles’ Kafka adaptation “The Trial” as a key influence, with its similarly labyrinthine sense of entrapment, along with “Alphaville,” “Eraserhead” and the dry Nordic comedies of Roy Andersson and Aki Kaurismaki; the latter’s imprint is particularly apparent in “The Double’s” regular eruptions of deadpan humor and its rich, almost Sirkian color palette. And so long as there are cinematic references to be footnoted, it’s hard not to flash back to “Rear Window” when Simon uses a telescope to spy on Hannah in her apartment — at first with longing, then with frustration as he bears helpless witness to her trysts with James.” –Justin Chang [1]

The Double is World Cinema Classic #218.

I like hybrids, mixed media …

… I like paintings you can listen to, music for the deaf and drawings for the blind. I like playing with medium specificity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuMI4lMk_-s

I recently discovered High Note (1960, above), a Warner Bros. Looney Tunes animated short directed by Chuck Jones.

In this charming film, various musical notes set up the sheet music to get ready for a performance of The Blue Danube Waltz. However, a sole note is missing. It turns out the note (a red-faced “High Note”) is drunk upon staggering out of the sheet music to “Little Brown Jug“, and the irritated conductor chases after him to put him back in his place so the waltz can continue as planned. Eventually, the rogue note is put back into place, but when the performance starts again, it has disappeared again, along with the rest of the sheet music. The composer then discovers that all the notes have gone into the “Little Brown Jug” to get drunk.

This film entered my head as visual music, although it is less so than the music visualization of Fantasia (1940), of which Oskar Fischinger‘s interpretation of J. S. Bach‘s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor is online here.

See also: https://blog.jahsonic.com/listen-to-this-drawing/