why do i hate it SO much when people post things on facebook like "go yemen go!" or "yeah egypt!", status updates cheering revolution? i guess i'm sympathetic to that in that repressive governments are bad and freedom of speech is good, etc. but there's something so sanctimonious and superficial about those kinds of things, something self congratulatory reminiscent of the way westerners like to believe twitter was central to the protests in iran after their election.
moreover, i think it's because a part of me thinks its just a general, indiscriminate love of "revolution." i think i think this because i feel that way myself, i get excited about things that upend the standard order of the news, catastrophes are wonderful to read about and i love when the numbers are high, higher, always more casualties, damages, homeless it's a perverse thing and i don't know how to explain it. but i feel like that same perversity might be at work when people have those status updates who have blind faith in "student protest," "youth uprisings" and assign them this undeniable good that they may not be worthy of. and in part i think loving those protests, those street movements is just a childish romance, a slightly more mature version of how a toddler loves when an earth mover savages the sidewalk, and how these people now dream of lighting things on fire and grabbing any reason to somehow upend things and run into the street. it's romantic and sexy and fun to upend things, may 68 had all the pretty girls after all. but i just wish they would admit that. at least i think so. maybe they just know a lot more than me and have substantive hopes for what all these "youths" might amount to in terms of better government.
i think they just want it to be like the last scene of the dreamers were they run out into the street and are ready to shout and wear a bandana and feel beautiful, idealistic solidarity. i think it's cute but irritating when it seems like they want to say it's substantive. revolution, if it really changes things, and isn't just bandana wearing and pretty girls, means blood and unhappiness and death and all sorts of things that aren't worth saying "go yemen!" for unless one is quite sure one knows what one is cheering FOR rather than just against, tearing up the sidewalk like that ecstatic toddler.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie
so funny. their consciences and the way they live so blandly and vilely. the manners! the "after you"! the drowning out of the truths about diplomatic relations with evil south american countries! that long talk about the lamb and infinite other nonsense at the very end is the ultimate nothingness. how can words be so empty?
i don't even know what to make of all the dreams, of the bleeding sergeant, of the sexy resistance fighter. AH the seizieme. the frenetic ugly sex, how ugly they all really are. how rafael goes from one person to the next at the party excusing himself. what hideous consciences those people have, what pettiness.
and then there are so many incomprehensible things, the military manuevers in the yard? the bishop, gardener? the soldier that dreams for everyone else with the blue eyes? everything was so messy and unfinished and scattered but so drily announced. what consummate manners. i want to read about this movie, i want to know what created this. that was hilarious
ah yes and reading through the wikipedia, just how everything is interrupted. how they deal so casually with the absurdity, how inhumanly unflappable they are. the dead man in the restaurant! how is it possible! there is such an ungodly focus on dinner itself that the bizarre episodes are just interruptions of that ultimate desire for that meal without having to say anything. such meaningless evil.
and all the fumbling, pathetic sex they want so desperately to have is also hilarious. what do these people want? why do they act the way they do? what do they fear? the answers to these questions are extremely banal and mundane. to drink a dhrrrryyyy martini properly. you have to respect the super drunk girl, she might be the only one who has thought enough thoughts to realize that their lifestyle demands a certain numbness
had something else to say about this after watching it like 3 times yesterday but it escapes me now. I JUST remembered -- how their voices are drowned out whenever something of great importance is being said, something that firmly contextualizes this movie, anchors it in the real and ugly politics of the world, is reminiscent of how in the play Mary Stuart, Elizabeth, and all the other characters, are deathly afraid of speaking, let alone writing down Mary Stuart's death certificate. it's kind of hilarious in this way, how circumspectly they must tread so as to always foist the guilt on others. right on down to the last man, who is forced to HOLD the signed sheet with no guidance whatsoever as to what he should do with it. or the noble jailer who refuses to kill mary stuart extra judicially. these are all things that cannot be spoken. and that sensibility is reflected in the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie, that hilarious propriety about not countenancing something by not acknowledging it even as you do it. that bull shit hiding, like not kissing the girl with whom you're cheating. these noble, slimy technicalities. so funny
i don't even know what to make of all the dreams, of the bleeding sergeant, of the sexy resistance fighter. AH the seizieme. the frenetic ugly sex, how ugly they all really are. how rafael goes from one person to the next at the party excusing himself. what hideous consciences those people have, what pettiness.
and then there are so many incomprehensible things, the military manuevers in the yard? the bishop, gardener? the soldier that dreams for everyone else with the blue eyes? everything was so messy and unfinished and scattered but so drily announced. what consummate manners. i want to read about this movie, i want to know what created this. that was hilarious
ah yes and reading through the wikipedia, just how everything is interrupted. how they deal so casually with the absurdity, how inhumanly unflappable they are. the dead man in the restaurant! how is it possible! there is such an ungodly focus on dinner itself that the bizarre episodes are just interruptions of that ultimate desire for that meal without having to say anything. such meaningless evil.
and all the fumbling, pathetic sex they want so desperately to have is also hilarious. what do these people want? why do they act the way they do? what do they fear? the answers to these questions are extremely banal and mundane. to drink a dhrrrryyyy martini properly. you have to respect the super drunk girl, she might be the only one who has thought enough thoughts to realize that their lifestyle demands a certain numbness
had something else to say about this after watching it like 3 times yesterday but it escapes me now. I JUST remembered -- how their voices are drowned out whenever something of great importance is being said, something that firmly contextualizes this movie, anchors it in the real and ugly politics of the world, is reminiscent of how in the play Mary Stuart, Elizabeth, and all the other characters, are deathly afraid of speaking, let alone writing down Mary Stuart's death certificate. it's kind of hilarious in this way, how circumspectly they must tread so as to always foist the guilt on others. right on down to the last man, who is forced to HOLD the signed sheet with no guidance whatsoever as to what he should do with it. or the noble jailer who refuses to kill mary stuart extra judicially. these are all things that cannot be spoken. and that sensibility is reflected in the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie, that hilarious propriety about not countenancing something by not acknowledging it even as you do it. that bull shit hiding, like not kissing the girl with whom you're cheating. these noble, slimy technicalities. so funny