June 2013
“Later, when Superman joins the fray, the movie turns into an orgy of gratuitous building-battering as Zod and Superman punch each other through several giant high-rises. It recalls a similar Metropolis fight between those two characters in 1980’s Superman II, only there, when Superman knocks a baddie into a building — an act that sends the skyscraper’s spire tumbling towards a crowd of people on the ground — Superman actually halts the fight to grab that spire before it lands, a quaint moment that still reminds us that the lives of innocent citizens are at stake. In Man of Steel, however, the superhero seems mostly unfazed by the people of Metropolis who are surely collateral damage to his big battle; similarly, director Zack Snyder seems to have waved it off. There is no acknowledgement that all of the buildings that are being destroyed might have people in them. It’s a bloodless massacre of concrete, 9/11 imagery erased of its most haunting factor: the loss of life.”
—
Over at Vulture, Kyle Buchanan talks back to the major post-9/11 blockbuster trend of using massive, violent destruction of cities and faceless, nameless innocent bystanders as backdrop for superhero, action and various other Michael Bay-esque films. It’s a great takedown of the casual nature of the approach to destruction, where collateral damage is common and rarely fully acknowledged (how much of NYC died in The Avengers? how many died in the last Star Trek?). The connection to 9/11 imagery and the cheapening of the fear that accompanies the images of crumbling buildings in a terror-struck metropolitan setting is important, too.
(The point is not fully “ugh, violence in movies” although there’s that. It’s more about the fact the violence is actually largely ignored, unacknowledged and has surprisingly little long-term impact on plot. Once over, Earth or wherever usually seems to be restored. Just minus a few thousand or more people.)
Trivial Greek Mythology
Lemuria
…There’s medication in your fanny pack
Because you’re a hypochondriac
Historical personalities like Andrew Carnegie
And his steel industry
Which you found fascinating..
Oh I think you’re just the oddest thing
You put cinnamon in the vegetable stew
And I thought that was silly of you
What are you doing with a potato like me
Which is exactly why I must leave.
You’re so perfect it’s sickening.
Now my bed is empty
Without Abigal’s trivial greek mythology…
“For when experienced with such intensity, it acts as a catharsis: the writer uses imaginary beings to rid himself of temptations and obsessions which he alone could not exorcise.”
—Kafka: The Torment of Man
“In “normal” lives human love generally wipes out the last vestiges of the Oedipus complex. As we shall see, however, this means of resolving the conflict was withheld from Kafka as it had even withheld from Kierkegaard. Or rather, Kafka himself rejected it. He drew up an interminable indictment which forced him to acknowledge that he was totally unfitted for social living and therefore for marriage. The strange oneiric delirium that consumed the last part of his existence was simply the sequel to this verdict.”
—Kafka: The Torment of Man
See You
Saves The Day
Saves The Day | See You
You want to know who I really am?
Yeah so do I, yeah so do I.
“
All their lives they had slaved at some kind of dull, heavy labor, behind desks and counters, in the fields and at tedious machines of all sorts, saving their pennies and dreaming of the leisure that would be theirs when they had enough. Finally that day came. They could draw a weekly income of ten or fifteen dollars. Where else should they go but California, the land of sunshine and oranges?
Once there, they discover that sunshine isn’t enough. They get tired of oranges, even of avocado pears and passion fruit. Nothing happens. They don’t know what to do with their time. They haven’t the mental equipment for leisure, the money nor the physical equipment for pleasure. Did they slave so long just to go to an occasional Iowa picnic? What else is there? They watch the waves come in at Venice. There wasn’t any ocean where most of them came from, but after you’ve seen one wave, you’ve seen them all. The same is true of the airplanes at Glendale. If only a plane would crash once in a while so that they could watch the passengers being consumed in a “holocaust of flame,” as the newspapers put it. But the planes never crash.
Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize that they’ve been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read the newspapers and went to the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, war. This daily diet made sophisticates of them. The sun is a joke. Oranges can’t titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated and betrayed. They have slaved and saved for nothing.
” —Nathaniel West (The Day Of The Locust)
Trapped Under Ice
Metallica
Trapped Under Ice-Metallica
Spitting Venom
Modest Mouse
Modest Mouse - Spitting Venom
You can say what you want, but don’t act like you care.
It takes more than one person to decide what’s fair.
“I’m unapologetic not because I’m strong-willed or overconfident, I’m unapologetic because this is it; this is my life. There is nothing I can do, no one I can please. I am a person with a strong sense of being, that’s all.”
—Jean Seberg (via thatkindofwoman)
