(no subject)
get up and get down with echidnas,
ya wanna get up and get down with echidnas...
ya wanna get up and get down with echidnas...
2007-07-09
Willy Wonka as Camusian Hero
In the original Willy Wonka film, the character of Wonka is a Camusian existential hero.
He is someone who sees clearly the absurdity of the human situation and chooses to thrive anyway, because it suits him to do so... and because there's nothing better to do.
The characters of the children and parents represent the people and the state, respectively, and in so, the audience themselves. Notice how the characters often seem to speak directly to the camera, especially Wonka.
Wonka has laid a trap for the audience, in the form of golden tickets, to come and see his Chocolate Factory at work. The Chocolate Factory represents the human condition in full view, not obscured by lies. He has set this trap in order to teach us a lesson about existence and human freedom.
He's no immoralist, but his ethics stem from a realization of human intersubjectivity. He gives the children the opportunity to do the right thing, but does not prevent them from doing otherwise, merely allowing them to suffer the full consequences of their choice.
The song Pure Imagination is practically a Camusian anthem. "If you want to view... paradise, simply look around and view it. Anything you want to, do it. Want to change the world? There's nothing to it..."
And of course Gene Wilder plays it perfectly, his mask slipping free when he is not observed by the children or parents, a sort of insouciance and self-bemusement playing across his features.
Wonka has a sense of humor, but it is a dark humor, filled with a full, unflinching realization of the suffering and nihilation at the heart of being. This dark humor does not stem from any particular psychological reason, but from an ontological awareness. (This is something that really annoyed me about the remake... the whole psychological explanation for Wonka, explains him right away into nothing. Which of course suits the modern movie industry, wishing to keep us in a state of comfortable self-deception, that Wonka is just another disturbed individual like us, and there's nothing else going on...)
But the original film lets us in on the joke, allowing Charlie at last, when he shows his honesty and commitment to intersubjectivity, to inherit the Chocolate Factory. If there is anything psychological going on it's loneliness, but this loneliness is ontological, a forlornness that is inescapable except through mutual re-creation. (i.e. what I often call "mirroring")
He is someone who sees clearly the absurdity of the human situation and chooses to thrive anyway, because it suits him to do so... and because there's nothing better to do.
The characters of the children and parents represent the people and the state, respectively, and in so, the audience themselves. Notice how the characters often seem to speak directly to the camera, especially Wonka.
Wonka has laid a trap for the audience, in the form of golden tickets, to come and see his Chocolate Factory at work. The Chocolate Factory represents the human condition in full view, not obscured by lies. He has set this trap in order to teach us a lesson about existence and human freedom.
He's no immoralist, but his ethics stem from a realization of human intersubjectivity. He gives the children the opportunity to do the right thing, but does not prevent them from doing otherwise, merely allowing them to suffer the full consequences of their choice.
The song Pure Imagination is practically a Camusian anthem. "If you want to view... paradise, simply look around and view it. Anything you want to, do it. Want to change the world? There's nothing to it..."
And of course Gene Wilder plays it perfectly, his mask slipping free when he is not observed by the children or parents, a sort of insouciance and self-bemusement playing across his features.
Wonka has a sense of humor, but it is a dark humor, filled with a full, unflinching realization of the suffering and nihilation at the heart of being. This dark humor does not stem from any particular psychological reason, but from an ontological awareness. (This is something that really annoyed me about the remake... the whole psychological explanation for Wonka, explains him right away into nothing. Which of course suits the modern movie industry, wishing to keep us in a state of comfortable self-deception, that Wonka is just another disturbed individual like us, and there's nothing else going on...)
But the original film lets us in on the joke, allowing Charlie at last, when he shows his honesty and commitment to intersubjectivity, to inherit the Chocolate Factory. If there is anything psychological going on it's loneliness, but this loneliness is ontological, a forlornness that is inescapable except through mutual re-creation. (i.e. what I often call "mirroring")
(no subject)
first you take bibbity
then you take bobbity
then take a little of boo
put em together and what have you got?
then you take bobbity
then take a little of boo
put em together and what have you got?
Xanadu as myth, reconsidered
"We are all greater artists than we realize" - The Nietzsch
The story opens with an "Artist" (you!), sketching a mural of some mysterious ethereral ladies and one in particular who is central... the Artist, dissatisfied with something in his work, despite it's apparent quality, leaves in despair...
Suddenly, there is an upsurge of transcendance, a nihilation of the static being of the mural, leaving in it's wake, The Muses.
This is accompanied by the song "I'm Alive".
The opening of the piece illustrates the almost frightening nihilation that gives rise to transcendant existence. The play into minor keys makes it clear that there is a Nothingness at the heart of being itself, now. Life is only possible through it's own contingency.( Read more... )
The story opens with an "Artist" (you!), sketching a mural of some mysterious ethereral ladies and one in particular who is central... the Artist, dissatisfied with something in his work, despite it's apparent quality, leaves in despair...
Suddenly, there is an upsurge of transcendance, a nihilation of the static being of the mural, leaving in it's wake, The Muses.
This is accompanied by the song "I'm Alive".
The opening of the piece illustrates the almost frightening nihilation that gives rise to transcendant existence. The play into minor keys makes it clear that there is a Nothingness at the heart of being itself, now. Life is only possible through it's own contingency.( Read more... )
(no subject)
The fact that it is a dilapidated and flawed reality is the clue to it's very existence. If it were pure and perfect we could distance ourselves from it and deny our part in living in it. The myth would fail most of us, but for the fact that it is just as ridiculous as we are, at once incredibly bizarre and yet all too familiar.