I never lie about fiction.
~*~
Showing posts with label lies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lies. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Monday, March 15, 2010
In case you didn't notice, I was being sarcastic.
I don't watch tv. Don't even own a tv. Well, that's not precisely true; I own one, but it lives in the storage unit. The point being: commercials. Even without tv, there are still commercials.
I've taken to watching recently an old tv show on Hulu. I used to watch The Daily Show on Hulu but now that's not on Hulu anymore. Hulu is thick with commercials. Not as bad as tv, but hell, we could go on about that for hours.
In my lifetime I've seen some pretty bad commercials. Awful ones. Those Doxidan commercials linger far longer than they should have. Imitation country music singer: "Doxidan, gentle Doxidan/When nature needs a helping hand..." Oldies are no match for the entire series of amazingly insipid Axe Spray/Shampoo/Stink-fume commericals. It leads me to believe that in addition to strange rather lurid chemicals, it also features a high content of brain repellent. My favorite awfulness—you know, the sort of trainwreck aspect of any given subject, horrifying in the extreme but also alluring in its grotesqueries?—is a wonderously STOOPID movie within an already moronic tableau of brief scenes for the Verizon Network G231/2 or whatever: a man is riding a roan horse cross the surf of a deserted beach with his hot babe straddled behind him. And what is he doing...? Texting or twittering or what-have-you.
Her: "This horse ride on the beach is so romantic, so sexy. I want you."
Him: "Hey, look. With the new Verison Network, I can GPS our exact location right here."
Her: "You use Axe Body Spray, don't you?"
Him: "And I wear Dockers."
Her: "Tell me just one thing..."
Him: "Anything."
Her: "Are you a Pepper, too—?"
Him: "—Hold on, I just got a text."
Brain repellent. Must be the brain repellent.
Hc Sunt Dragones.
· • ·
I've taken to watching recently an old tv show on Hulu. I used to watch The Daily Show on Hulu but now that's not on Hulu anymore. Hulu is thick with commercials. Not as bad as tv, but hell, we could go on about that for hours.
In my lifetime I've seen some pretty bad commercials. Awful ones. Those Doxidan commercials linger far longer than they should have. Imitation country music singer: "Doxidan, gentle Doxidan/When nature needs a helping hand..." Oldies are no match for the entire series of amazingly insipid Axe Spray/Shampoo/Stink-fume commericals. It leads me to believe that in addition to strange rather lurid chemicals, it also features a high content of brain repellent. My favorite awfulness—you know, the sort of trainwreck aspect of any given subject, horrifying in the extreme but also alluring in its grotesqueries?—is a wonderously STOOPID movie within an already moronic tableau of brief scenes for the Verizon Network G231/2 or whatever: a man is riding a roan horse cross the surf of a deserted beach with his hot babe straddled behind him. And what is he doing...? Texting or twittering or what-have-you.
Her: "This horse ride on the beach is so romantic, so sexy. I want you."
Him: "Hey, look. With the new Verison Network, I can GPS our exact location right here."
Her: "You use Axe Body Spray, don't you?"
Him: "And I wear Dockers."
Her: "Tell me just one thing..."
Him: "Anything."
Her: "Are you a Pepper, too—?"
Him: "—Hold on, I just got a text."
Brain repellent. Must be the brain repellent.
Hc Sunt Dragones.
· • ·
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Munich: Passion, Justice, and Vengeance
Speilberg is really his own worst enemy. Individual scenes he shots are sometimes marvelous, but the entirity of his films get burdened with his moralizing and Being Very Important.
Munich is, to my way of thinking, exactly that. I tried watching it a few years ago for enjoyment, found it awful, and turned it off less than an hour into it. Watching it for class I deconstructed what about it I found so inept.
This was the subject of an in-class presentation, so this paper is kind of a second draft of that, taking the considerations of what came up in the Q&A after my presentation.
~•~
(2nd draft
ENG 290
October 1, 2009
Essay 1
In Steven Speilberg's film Munich (2005), we are presented with a situation that "seeks not to exonerate, but to complicate" (Dr. Lisa Pollard) the seething relationship between Israel and, via Black September, Palestine. By drawing comparison to, and deliberately blurring the ethical lines between, a terrorist conspiracy that murders Olympic athletes and the State of Israel bypassing their own laws in order to perpetrate assassination, Speilberg constructs a complicated scenario.
The initial part of the film displays for us intimate views of state-sanctioned killings—including the collateral damage of a dead child as well as injury to several uninvolved parties who happen to have had the misfortune of staying in a hotel room next to the intended target of the Israeli hit squad. Avner conducts these first killings out of duty to his country and homeland, but during one mission, Avner and his team come face-to-face with some PLO members. Avner passes himself off as a Palestini and during a conversation between him and the PLO leader, Ali, the first seeds are planted in Avner's mind that perhaps there is something more to be considered about his mission than protecting his homeland and his duty to his country. Blindly following orders can take him only so far, and that what is truly important in life is his own family.
Here is the structure for a tale that promises biting sharp commentary upon a knotted political issue—that of terrorism and assassination, revenge and vengeance; where the lines are drawn between these ephemeral and ever-changing ideologies. Yet, at the climax of the film, comes a questionable scene that threatens to unravel the tangled skein on which Speilberg weaves his mortality tale.
Having established at the beginning of the film that, like millions of others around the world, Avner watched the news of the massacre on television, it becomes a source of concern and question when Speilberg inserts a flashback to the murder of the Israeli athletes interpolated with Avner having sex with his wife.
There are two major possibilities concerning this scene and its placement in the film. If the flashback is meant to be a narrative perspective—that is, from the omniscient point-of-view of the narrator of the film—then it its placement at this juncture of the story seems less-than-ideal. Authorial intrusion of such a violent and powerful flashback in the midst of such a crucial and intimate scene is crass and invasive. It threatens to undermine one of the key elements Speilberg wishes to address in this story, that of ethical responsibility. The authorial theme here is one which raises the questions of does a nation or state have the right to exact eye-for-an-eye revenge?; who pays the cost of accountability—the people who sit in seats of power within a governmental body or the people who are being governed?; and what is the value of trading compassion for blood knowing it will only extract a response in kind, and continuing the vicious spiral of murder and terror? The character of Golda Mier herself calls these questions to the fore during an early scene when she rhetorically asks of her advisors, "Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own principles." She has considered these questions and draws her own answers to them. We wonder if Speilberg, in crafting his film to raise these questions, has concerned himself with what sort of answer his audience might conclude from his narrative. Seeking ethical answers isn't as crucial as drawing up the proper situation in which to even ask the questions. By inserting an authorial intrusion into the film at this point begs the question of why now and why frame it with this intimate scene of Avner and his wife?
The other possibility here is that the flashback is meant to be some sort of personal rumination on Avner's part. But if this is so, similar questions must be addressed, as well as the simple discordant fact that if the flashback is meant to be from Avner's viewpoint, it can only be seen to be a false memory. And by having Avner remember an event as his own that he took no direct part in is a misrepresentation that denies us as an audience the chance to be directly confronted with Avner's own person atrocity exhibit. His own killing of state-assigned targets—and especially the people who were collateral damage of his assassinations—has led him, and us, to a point of ethical turmoil and moral uncertainty. Instead of coming to this dire convoluted and intrinsically important point, we fall back upon a saccharin cliché of cinematic sorrow, the standard homogenized we-should-all-feel-bad-about-this, moment of pre-fabricated emotion where the Israeli athletes are murdered by Arabic terrorist in slow motion with heightened sound effects and a lingering shot of bound hands folded in prayer. This unnecessarily simplifies the entangled issue at the heart of, not only the narrative of the film Munich, but also of the actual tragedy that unfolds in the world around us each day.
Just as Avner’s wife covers his eyes to metaphorically hide his traumatic visions—regardless of whether or not they were his to remember—by placing this flashback scene in a spot which leaves its meaning and source ambiguous at best, Speilberg covers our eyes to the fertile complexities he has entreated us to consider. In the end, we are left with neither complication, nor exoneration, merely shallow platitudes in an ever-deepening dilemma of misery, contempt, and futile animosity.
If we accept as reasonable truth, as the epigram from lexicographer and moralist Samuel Johnson states at the beginning of this essay, that "injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged," then we can see that the killings depicted in Munich are examples of both vengeance and revenge. Given that, no matter which perspective was intended with the flashback scene placed where it is in the film, the question posed to us is who has acted with vengeance and who has sought to extract revenge? Any answer we conclude must certainly complicate the issue and never should those involved be exonerated.
Munich. Dir. Steven Speilberg.
· • ·
Munich is, to my way of thinking, exactly that. I tried watching it a few years ago for enjoyment, found it awful, and turned it off less than an hour into it. Watching it for class I deconstructed what about it I found so inept.
This was the subject of an in-class presentation, so this paper is kind of a second draft of that, taking the considerations of what came up in the Q&A after my presentation.
~•~
(2nd draft
ENG 290
October 1, 2009
Essay 1
Munich: Passion, Justice, and Vengeance
"Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice.
Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged."
―Samuel Johnson
"Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice.
Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged."
―Samuel Johnson
In Steven Speilberg's film Munich (2005), we are presented with a situation that "seeks not to exonerate, but to complicate" (Dr. Lisa Pollard) the seething relationship between Israel and, via Black September, Palestine. By drawing comparison to, and deliberately blurring the ethical lines between, a terrorist conspiracy that murders Olympic athletes and the State of Israel bypassing their own laws in order to perpetrate assassination, Speilberg constructs a complicated scenario.
The initial part of the film displays for us intimate views of state-sanctioned killings—including the collateral damage of a dead child as well as injury to several uninvolved parties who happen to have had the misfortune of staying in a hotel room next to the intended target of the Israeli hit squad. Avner conducts these first killings out of duty to his country and homeland, but during one mission, Avner and his team come face-to-face with some PLO members. Avner passes himself off as a Palestini and during a conversation between him and the PLO leader, Ali, the first seeds are planted in Avner's mind that perhaps there is something more to be considered about his mission than protecting his homeland and his duty to his country. Blindly following orders can take him only so far, and that what is truly important in life is his own family.
Here is the structure for a tale that promises biting sharp commentary upon a knotted political issue—that of terrorism and assassination, revenge and vengeance; where the lines are drawn between these ephemeral and ever-changing ideologies. Yet, at the climax of the film, comes a questionable scene that threatens to unravel the tangled skein on which Speilberg weaves his mortality tale.
Having established at the beginning of the film that, like millions of others around the world, Avner watched the news of the massacre on television, it becomes a source of concern and question when Speilberg inserts a flashback to the murder of the Israeli athletes interpolated with Avner having sex with his wife.
There are two major possibilities concerning this scene and its placement in the film. If the flashback is meant to be a narrative perspective—that is, from the omniscient point-of-view of the narrator of the film—then it its placement at this juncture of the story seems less-than-ideal. Authorial intrusion of such a violent and powerful flashback in the midst of such a crucial and intimate scene is crass and invasive. It threatens to undermine one of the key elements Speilberg wishes to address in this story, that of ethical responsibility. The authorial theme here is one which raises the questions of does a nation or state have the right to exact eye-for-an-eye revenge?; who pays the cost of accountability—the people who sit in seats of power within a governmental body or the people who are being governed?; and what is the value of trading compassion for blood knowing it will only extract a response in kind, and continuing the vicious spiral of murder and terror? The character of Golda Mier herself calls these questions to the fore during an early scene when she rhetorically asks of her advisors, "Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own principles." She has considered these questions and draws her own answers to them. We wonder if Speilberg, in crafting his film to raise these questions, has concerned himself with what sort of answer his audience might conclude from his narrative. Seeking ethical answers isn't as crucial as drawing up the proper situation in which to even ask the questions. By inserting an authorial intrusion into the film at this point begs the question of why now and why frame it with this intimate scene of Avner and his wife?
The other possibility here is that the flashback is meant to be some sort of personal rumination on Avner's part. But if this is so, similar questions must be addressed, as well as the simple discordant fact that if the flashback is meant to be from Avner's viewpoint, it can only be seen to be a false memory. And by having Avner remember an event as his own that he took no direct part in is a misrepresentation that denies us as an audience the chance to be directly confronted with Avner's own person atrocity exhibit. His own killing of state-assigned targets—and especially the people who were collateral damage of his assassinations—has led him, and us, to a point of ethical turmoil and moral uncertainty. Instead of coming to this dire convoluted and intrinsically important point, we fall back upon a saccharin cliché of cinematic sorrow, the standard homogenized we-should-all-feel-bad-about-this, moment of pre-fabricated emotion where the Israeli athletes are murdered by Arabic terrorist in slow motion with heightened sound effects and a lingering shot of bound hands folded in prayer. This unnecessarily simplifies the entangled issue at the heart of, not only the narrative of the film Munich, but also of the actual tragedy that unfolds in the world around us each day.
Just as Avner’s wife covers his eyes to metaphorically hide his traumatic visions—regardless of whether or not they were his to remember—by placing this flashback scene in a spot which leaves its meaning and source ambiguous at best, Speilberg covers our eyes to the fertile complexities he has entreated us to consider. In the end, we are left with neither complication, nor exoneration, merely shallow platitudes in an ever-deepening dilemma of misery, contempt, and futile animosity.
If we accept as reasonable truth, as the epigram from lexicographer and moralist Samuel Johnson states at the beginning of this essay, that "injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged," then we can see that the killings depicted in Munich are examples of both vengeance and revenge. Given that, no matter which perspective was intended with the flashback scene placed where it is in the film, the question posed to us is who has acted with vengeance and who has sought to extract revenge? Any answer we conclude must certainly complicate the issue and never should those involved be exonerated.
•
Works Cited
Munich. Dir. Steven Speilberg.
Perf. Eric Bana and Ayelet Zurer.
Universal, DreamWorks SKG, 2005. DVD.
Pollard, Dr. Lisa S."ENG 290—Terrorism in Literature."
UNCW, Wilmington. 27 Aug. 2009. Lecture.
· • ·
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Broken Little Lies
Pen to the Page and Write.
~•~
In the beginning was the Word. The Word became flesh. Words to memorize and words hypnotize. Words make my mouth exercise. Words assemble, words be quick... Cast letters to spell words, and become sentenced by what is said; by what is written. Judged by it. Writing is magick, of course. And we should be bound by our words. The sentencing of our thought made word. A promise; an oath. Sending forth an affirmation; a troth of binding.
We should not promise something easily, nor lightly. And, once given, an oath should be kept except in extreme circumstances. Breaking one's word is a crime, a sin, against oneself. And should perhaps be viewed as a defeat in the ongoing struggle of attaining a life of compassion and brightness.
Of course, some persons derive pleasure from creating falsehoods, and inflicting them upon others. Place no faith with such people, yet they are not to be despised, merely avoided upon discovery of their false intentions.
Anything new or strange should be cautiously welcomed.
Once I dreamed I stood in the wreckage and debris of my own broken promises. They lay littered about my feet. I gathered the scattered pieces and threw them up into the sky where they stuck across the ceiling of the cosmos. And then I saw that they were not alone up there, for among them were the billions of glittering fragments of so many other broken promises.
The brighter the light shone, the darker the shadows cast.
When Love and Hate cease, there is but indifference. And that is truly far worse than either of the strong emotions. For in feeling angry or feeling concern, at least there is feeling. Without feeling, there is no care; no compassion. And then the Vacuity has overcome the Swell.
There is Truth. And there is Lie. In truth, is always faith. Faith is what you know to be true, even if you don't believe it. Lies, are the broken promises to yourself.
· • ·
~•~
In the beginning was the Word. The Word became flesh. Words to memorize and words hypnotize. Words make my mouth exercise. Words assemble, words be quick... Cast letters to spell words, and become sentenced by what is said; by what is written. Judged by it. Writing is magick, of course. And we should be bound by our words. The sentencing of our thought made word. A promise; an oath. Sending forth an affirmation; a troth of binding.
We should not promise something easily, nor lightly. And, once given, an oath should be kept except in extreme circumstances. Breaking one's word is a crime, a sin, against oneself. And should perhaps be viewed as a defeat in the ongoing struggle of attaining a life of compassion and brightness.
Of course, some persons derive pleasure from creating falsehoods, and inflicting them upon others. Place no faith with such people, yet they are not to be despised, merely avoided upon discovery of their false intentions.
Anything new or strange should be cautiously welcomed.
Once I dreamed I stood in the wreckage and debris of my own broken promises. They lay littered about my feet. I gathered the scattered pieces and threw them up into the sky where they stuck across the ceiling of the cosmos. And then I saw that they were not alone up there, for among them were the billions of glittering fragments of so many other broken promises.
The brighter the light shone, the darker the shadows cast.
When Love and Hate cease, there is but indifference. And that is truly far worse than either of the strong emotions. For in feeling angry or feeling concern, at least there is feeling. Without feeling, there is no care; no compassion. And then the Vacuity has overcome the Swell.
There is Truth. And there is Lie. In truth, is always faith. Faith is what you know to be true, even if you don't believe it. Lies, are the broken promises to yourself.
· • ·
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