Category Archives: Art

Saturday Matinee: T2 Trainspotting

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“T2 Trainspotting” (2017) is a a sequel to the cult classic Trainspotting. Both films are directed by Danny Boyle, written by John Hodge, and based on novels by Irvine Welsh. T2 stars the original cast, including leads Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, and Robert Carlyle and also includes film clips, music, and archive sound from the first film.

The film picks up 20 years after the events of the first film in which Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) stole £16,000 in drug money from his friends and fled to Amsterdam. After suffering a heart attack in a gym, Mark finds himself in a mid-life crisis and decides to return to Edinburgh to make amends with his former friends. However, things don’t go as smoothly as planned.

Watch the full film here.

Saturday Matinee: Synecdoche, New York

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Exploring Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York”: A Philosophical Analysis

By Jordan Siron

Source: Deathbed Decameron

PREFACE

“There are too many ideas and things and people. Too many directions to go. I was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something, is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size.”

— Susan Orleans, Adaptation (written by Charlie Kaufman)

I’ve wrestled near-tirelessly with this analysis, as Synecdoche, New York is a unique beast. Standard film analysis won’t do, and far more capable minds have already broken down the film’s narrative, thematic, and technical components. This left me a little lost.

Should I discuss the film’s merits on a technical level? Should I address themes and how they are tackled via visual and narrative motifs? How much backstory should I present, or withhold? Should I focus on the unique structure of the film, which plays with our concept of time and how it is perceived as we age?

At the end of the day, I decided to throw my hands in the air and declare, “Fuck it!” What interests me most about the film — what I feel really makes it one of the most important films of modern cinema — is the philosophy at its core. After all, the conceit behind Synecdoche, New York is what endears the film to me over any other. It is as good a subject for analysis as any of the myriad options at my disposal.

I take for granted that you have seen the film prior to reading this. As such, I will not be providing a synopsis. I will be referring to characters as events as if you are already familiar with them. Should you have stumbled upon this and have yet to see the film, you can buy it via iTunes, Amazon.com, and elsewhere. Hell, you can probably torrent it.

I would also like to take a moment to send a shoutout to Mick over at Being Charlie Kaufman for sharing this piece with his audience. I love the site, and it means a lot to me. I cannot thank you enough! Any one looking for a wealth of information on Charlie Kaufman and his work, BCK is your best bet. It’s a veritable treasure trove.

The Philosophy of Synecdoche, New York:

Dethroning Solipsism, and Dispelling The Concept of “The Other”

“I do believe you have a wound too. I do believe it is both specific to you and common to everyone. I do believe it is the thing about you that must be hidden and protected, it is the thing that must be tap danced over five shows a day, it is the thing that won’t be interesting to other people if revealed. It is the thing that makes you weak and pathetic. It is the thing that truly, truly, truly makes loving you impossible. It is your secret, even from yourself. But it is the thing that wants to live.”

— Charlie Kaufman, BAFTA Screenwriters Lecture 2011

Synecdoche, New York is a film that concerns itself with examining solipsism, and in disposing of the harmful concept of “The Other”. Solipsism is the belief that only one’s own mind is certain to exist; that one’s perception of reality and events is the only certainty, the only truth. As a philosophy, it is akin to Objectivism — the belief that the pursuit of one’s own self interest is the only moral obligation to which any human is bound.

Solipsism is a gross philosophy. It does not leave room for the understanding or concern of others. It is diametrically opposed to Altruism, which — while impractical to some extent — at least gives us something worthy to strive for. While one can argue against the practicality of Altruism, it’s hard to rationalize Objectivism and Solipsism as being inherently healthy life philosophies. While they may serve the individual, they do not foster the wellbeing of the human community writ large.

Now, all of that isn’t to say that individuals who prescribe to philosophies that place themselves at the center of their own universe are inherently bad. One can argue that such philosophies drive individuals towards great personal success, and through that success said individuals can turn around and provide aid of which they might not have otherwise been capable. There is a certain benefit to being concerned with one’s own self, but this dissection is not concerned with those few individuals who put their own universes in check before extending their helping hand. So it follows that Synecdoche, New York does not concern itself with such.

The film examines solipsism at its worst, demonstrating the dangers of such a philosophy through its chosen vehicle: Caden Cotard.

Solipsism As A Catalyst For Emotional Distance

As is often the case in Kaufman’s films, Caden is a hard protagonist to like. In fact, the more time we spend with him the harder it is to view him with even a modicum of sympathy. From the word go, we see that Caden is a fairly self-involved person. While his wife, Adele, wears herself ragged trying to support herself, their daughter, Olive, as well as Caden’s mounting insecurities, Caden seems concerned only with what exists within his own private universe.

We are introduced to Caden as he laments, as would  a broken record, his impending death. He constantly feels ill, and sees detritus in every newspaper headline or mail order magazine. He even occupies his time by re-staging the Arthur Miller classic Death of a Salesman, a play that concerns itself with an old nobody trying desperately to amount to some pre-conceived notion of success before the chance escapes him. Like Caden, the play’s protagonist, Willy Loman, is revealed to be a pathetic creature who chases self-satisfaction at the expense of his closest loved ones.

Willy Loman is revealed to be an adulterous, distant husband, and Caden is revealed to be something quite similar. While there are suggestions placed throughout the film that Caden is unfaithful to Adele (or at least capable of such infidelity), it is his “why me” woes that bind him to Loman. He is a man who is personally responsible for the deteriorating status of his marriage to Adele, and to his lack of fulfillment  as an artist, but he cannot see outside of himself in order to look upon the seeds he has sown. And, as we learn, the crops his selfishness yields are beyond poisoned.

When Sammy jumps to his death after Caden refuses him his right to fall in love with Hazel (mirroring Caden’s early attempt at suicide), Caden reacts shamefully. While every one involved with his production gathers around Sammy’s lifeless body to mourn, Caden screams at the deceased man for “getting it wrong”. After all, Caden did not jump to his death. He doesn’t even see Sammy as a fellow human being by this point, merely as a liability. His suicide was not a loss of life, but a hiccup in the production that created an issue of logistics for Caden.

Even more troubling is Caden’s inability to notice the looming apocalypse that will some day lay waste to New York, perhaps the entire world. As the film progresses, we start to see signs that all is not well in the real world. Army vehicles round up citizens. Gunfire and explosions can be heard in the distance, almost non-stop. Men and women walk the streets wearing gas masks, or leading one another around by leashes as if they were pets.

In one scene Caden leaves his warehouse/theatre for the night with Claire (his second wife/leading lady),and  he fails to notice a line of people standing outside. One man stops Caden to ask him when “it” will be finished, as “things are getting bad out here”. Caden assumes the man is anticipating his play; the man is actually referring to the life-sized recreation of New York City Caden is building within the warehouse. The people of New York are hoping to escape the impending calamity by seeking refuge within the safety of the warehouse. Caden, ever the self-important artist, simply assumes they are just anxious to behold his work.

This is very troubling, as it demonstrates Caden’s inability to see the decaying state of life outside of his own mind. He has every opportunity to save the people of New York, but he can’t be bothered to take notice of that fact. And, as the film reaches its conclusion, we see that Caden’s obsession with his own rational self-interest allows for millions of lives to be snuffed out when they might have been spared.

The film never really resolves this plot element, unfortunately. We see Caden accept that he is not unique, but we never see how he dealt with the realization that he could have saved all of those lives — or if he even has that realization at all. This might be my only valid complaint regarding the film, but it is forgivable. It is already quite dense, and I suppose there just wasn’t enough time to tackle that aspect.

Solipsism As A Catalyst For Sexism

As mentioned earlier, Caden does very little in the way of parenting. It is established that Adele tends to the physical and emotional needs to Olive while Caden soaks in self-pity. Caden offers his wife no means of validation, yet weakly begs for all that Adele can spare. He wants her to admire him as an artist, even at the cost of ignoring her own aspirations to be a painter.

For instance: when Adele opts to miss the opening night of his re-staging of Death of a Salesman, so that she can meet her own deadline, Caden sets up shop in the town called Passive Aggression. Add to that, Caden fishes for Adele’s admiration after she does finally attend the play.

When Adele stands by her principles and denies Caden that validation (as she sees no merit in re-staging other people’s plays, which we infer to be Caden’s schtick), he sulks about like a scorned child. And therein lies the ultimate issue between the two: Where Caden should be a partner to Adele, some one who reciprocates the support he receives, he is instead like another child for Adele to raise and nurture. This is a particularly poignant character flaw, as it reflects the all-too-common issue that husbands have with their wives — a difference in the sexes granted not by nature, but by privilege.

Gender becomes a very integral aspect of the film, as it ties so perfectly to Kaufman’s thesis regarding Solipsism. Caden is a man who wants the women in his life to be the driving forces behind his brilliance. They are instruments to him, when they should be people. We might call this affliction the Muse Dilemma — the pathological need to attribute any greatness in ourselves to a woman we place on a pedestal, woefully viewing Her as some divine influence through which we achieve our greatness. The trouble with this view is three pronged:

  • First: We diminish in ourselves the ability to create without some heavenly catalyst.
  • Second: We refuse to see that the Muse, herself, longs to achieve her own aspirations and desires. She does not exist to simply inspire greatness in us.
  • Third: Viewing women (any person, really, but for the sake of the themes of the film, women specifically) as vessels for our potential breeds a penchant for solipsist thinking. We rob them of their own identities. We humor the idea of women being “others”.

Taking the above into consideration, it should come as no surprise that the story demands that Caden see existence through the eyes of a woman — an “other”. Kaufman provides this opportunity for Caden’s growth brilliantly, in the form of Ellen Bascomb.

Ellen, we learn, is the cleaning lady who services Adele’s Manhattan loft. Through the machinations of the narrative, Caden finds himself stepping into Ellen’s shoes. While he does so with the surreptitious intention of getting re-connected with Adele (writing letters under Ellen’s identity, even basking in the smell of her bed sheets), there is something much more important taking place beyond his knowledge — as well as our own. There is a subtle transformation taking place. Caden is unwittingly evolving.

The full effects of Caden’s charade are not revealed to him, nor to us, until Millicent takes over as the director of his play. Through her God-like direction (delivered to Caden through an ear piece, serving as a wonderfully, thematically ironic metaphor for divine guidance), Millicent steadily leads Caden to shed his own persona while adopting Ellen’s. What comes to pass is a heartbreaking sequence in which we learn about Ellen who, up until now, has been an unseen “Other” merely used by Caden for his own agenda.

In one of the most beautifully sullen monologues in recent film history, Ellen tells us of her life of woes. She is stuck in an unfulfilling marriage, wed to a husband who looks at her as a burden. We learn that her life-long dream was to have a daughter with whom she could enjoy picnics akin to those Ellen herself enjoyed with her mother. She wanted the warmth of companionship, the fulfillment of a loving family. For whatever reason, Ellen and her husband, Eric, never had that child. So they grow old together, drifting further apart with each passing day.

Caden is moved to tears, feeling some one else’s pain for the first time in the film — perhaps in his entire life. He sees so much of his own woes are shared by Ellen. Where she was the overlooked wife, Caden was the husband doing the overlooking. Where Ellen longs for a daughter she never had, Caden longs for the daughter he felt had been stolen from him. In fact, this tie that binds reveals an interesting twist that can easily be missed.

(This is an especially poignant scene, as Caden — who has lost the ability to cry genuine tears without medical aid, as a side effect of his mysterious illness — is able to cry of his own volition. It isn’t until he feels the very real pain of another person that he can manage this feat.)

During Caden’s visit to a dying Olive, she refuses to forgive him — but for what? Olive claims that Caden betrayed the family by running off to have anal sex with his gay lover, Eric. This is important, as Caden had already been impersonating Ellen well before this point in the film. Eric is, of course, Ellen’s husband.

One might deduce that the reason Ellen never had a daughter was to do with Eric’s insistence on having anal sex with Ellen (potentially because he did not love her enough to participate in a deeper intimacy), and thus never affording the opportunity to conceive a child. Even though this scene takes place long before Caden’s self realization, the line between Ellen and Caden has blurred to the point that they are essentially the same person.

The Moral Of The Story

“You have struggled into existence, and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone’s experience. Every single one. The specifics hardly matter. Everyone’s everyone.” Millicent Weems, Act III

Herein lies the existential rub of the film: Caden comes to discover that he is Ellen. So, too, is he Adele, and Hazel, and any number of persons who populate this earth. Now, that is not to say that he is physically these people. He is Caden, and they are Adele, or Hazel, or Ellen. They are individuals who, taken on their own, represent the whole of humanity. Kaufman is telling us that individuals are synecdoches of the human race — mere slivers of the greater whole. Caden suffers because others suffer, because that is the nature of a living being. His woes are specific to himself, but they are common of every one.

Every one gets sick. Every person has his/her heart broken, or dreams crushed. And, in the end, every one dies. Caden is not unique, so he should not look at his own circumstances as being as such.

While it may be easy to mistake this moral for cynicism, it is actually quite beautiful. In making this statement, Kaufman is telling us all that we should be as mindful of the problems of others as we are the issues that plague ourselves. It’s enticing to get lost in self pity, and even more attractive to pursue our own self interests, but there is very little good that can come from such behavior. Only by seeing ourselves in the eyes of “the other” can humanity’s redeeming qualities outweigh it’s ills.

 

Watch the full film here.

Saturday Matinee: Henry Fool

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“Henry Fool” (1997) is an independent dark comedy written, produced and directed by Hal Hartley (b. 9/3/59). The plot centers on downtrodden garbage-man Simon Grim (James Urbaniak) who, with the encouragement of rebellious writer Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan), becomes a celebrated poet. As Simon’s writing career ascends, Henry loses himself to drinking and hedonism until his mysterious past catches up to him and he needs Simon’s help. The film won the best screenplay award at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival and spawned two sequels: Fay Grim (2006) and Ned Rifle (2014).

Watch the full film here.

Russian Assets and Realignment as the Dems Morph into Neocons

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By Renée Parsons

Source: OffGuardian

As you may have figured out by now, Hillary Clinton, warped by her own self aggrandizement of entitlement, did Tulsi Gabbard and her Presidential campaign against interventionist wars a huge incidental favor.

While the Democrats continue to splinter and spiral out of control on the eve of what promises to be a transformative national election, the Grand Inquisitor seized an opportunity to allege that Gabbard (and Jill Stein) are “Russian assets” and “Putin puppets”.

Since Tulsi is a Major in the US Army Reserves and holds the highest security clearance available, the term ‘asset,’ which is associated with being an agent of a foreign power, carries a level of national security significance.

Believing herself untouchable and immune from any genuine criticism or objective analysis after having successfully evaded prosecution from the nation’s top law enforcement agencies,  HRC went off the deep end dragging the Democratic party further into the ditch.

She is a favorite of the Russians.  That’s assuming that Jill Stein will give it up which she might not because she is also a Russian asset.”

Clinton’s historic pronouncement came in the mistaken belief that publicly humiliating Gabbard would intimidate the Aloha Girl to silence and seek refuge on her surfboard – but that is not how it has played out.

An unexpected bonus proved once again that political strategy has never been Clinton’s strong suit as her malicious comments have brought the anti-war alt left with the libertarian alt-right together in Gabbard’s defense.  With HRC’s injudicious taunts, the glimmer of an emerging political realignment, one that has been at odds with both the Dem and Republican establishments, has surfaced – probably not exactly what HRC intended.

In response to having received a burst of unprecedented support, Gabbard is about to assure her place on the November debate stage and continues to solidify her credibility as a critic of a corrupt bipartisan political establishment and its endless wars.

If they falsely portray me as a traitor, they can do it to anyone.  Don’t be afraid. Join me in speaking truth to power to take back the Democrat Party and country from the corrupt elite.”

It is noteworthy that HRCs accusation was to the only candidate who stands in direct opposition to the Queen Bee’s history for the war machine and all of its bells and whistles.  As if to call attention to the contradiction, the entire fiasco has acknowledged what was never meant to be acknowledged: that one little known Congresswoman from Hawaii would dare to publicly confront the omnipotent HRC with her own demons and malfeasance; thereby elevating the one candidacy that represents a threat to the military industrial complex and its globalist order.

It is no coincidence that the corporate media operates in lockstep as an offensive October 12th  NY Times article was immediately followed by a CNN commentary  as well as other media sycophants, all tagging Gabbard as a Russian asset.

Contrary to Journalism 101 on how professional media should conduct themselves, there has been no evidence, no facts, no supporting documentation as they characteristically rely on innuendo and disinformation.

At the last Dem debate and during the kerfuffle with Clinton, Tulsi has stepped up and showed herself to be a candidate the country has been waiting for.  With a powerful inner grit, she did not hesitate to take the Times and CNN publicly to task and then in response called HRC out as a warmonger and dared her to enter the 2020 fray.

There lies a deep truth within Gabbard’s response especially identifying Clinton as the “personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party.”

During Clinton’s term as Secretary of State which is little more than a Glorified Global Hustler for the US military industrial complex, the Democratic Party lost its soul, morphing as nefarious neocons in pursuit of raw political and economic power that emanates from a policy of unfettered regime change and interventionist wars.

As Democrats embraced the neocons with no objection to the unrestrained violence, increased military budgets, indiscriminate selling of weapons to bomb a civilian population, then why should the party’s grassroots object to the Tuesday morning assassination list or drone attacks on civilians or creating war in four countries living in peace in 2008?

As the party faithful allow themselves to dismiss all the suffering, the death and destruction wrought by US-made weapons as if Amazon and Google toys were an acceptable trade, they lost their conscience and their connection to the basic essence of humanity’s need for peace, love and compassion.

The latest example of the Party’s devotion to war is their opposition to the withdrawal of US troops from Syria as they created the phony debate that the Kurds were worth more American blood or resources.  The Dems have always been more pro-war than they have been given credit for with WWI, WWII, the Korean War and Vietnam all initiated and/or expanded under Democrat Presidents.

With no substantiation from the mindless meanderings of a seriously disoriented woman, it is now clear that Clinton’s derangement syndrome of unresolved guilt and denial led the Democratic party to its irrational embrace of Russiagate as the justification for her 2016 loss.

In other words, it was Russiagate that protected HRC’s fragile self-esteem from the necessary introspection as Americans were pitted against one another, dividing the nation in a deliberate disruption of civil society in a more acrimonious manner than any time since the 1860’s.  The country has paid a bitter, unnecessary price for a divisive strategy due to Clinton’s refusal to personally accept responsibility for her own failings.

HRC’s most egregious war crimes as Secretary of State include assigning Victoria Nuland to conduct the overthrow of a democratically elected President in Ukraine in 2014 and the ensuing violence and civil war in the Donbass as well as her joyous rapture cackling at the death of Libyan President Qaddafi in 2011. The now infamous video “We came, we saw, he died” showed her to be more than just your average war criminal but a Monster who experiences an aberrant thrill at death and destruction.

Since June, TPTB have done their darnedest to deny Tulsi a spot on the debate stage rigging the qualifying requirements as best they could.  Making it near impossible for the polling firms, which rely on campaign season and their economic connection with the DNC to call the shots in a fair and equitable manner.

As the early primary states loom ahead, the last thing TPTB need is a powerful pro-peace voice resonating with the American public. The message seems clear:  talk of peace is verboten and equates with being a Russia asset and anyone with pacifist tendencies will be publicly chastised and condemned for being a tool of the Kremlin.

None of that has stopped Tulsi Gabbard.

 

Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31

How To Defeat The Empire

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By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

One of the biggest and most consistent challenges of my young career so far has been finding ways to talk about solutions to our predicament in a way that people will truly hear. I talk about these solutions constantly, and some readers definitely get it, but others will see me going on and on about a grassroots revolution against the establishment narrative control machine and then say “Okay, but what do we do?” or “You talk about problems but never offer any solutions!”

Part of the difficulty is that I don’t talk much about the old attempts at solutions we’ve already tried that people have been conditioned to listen for. I don’t endorse politicians, I don’t advocate starting a new political party, I don’t support violent revolution, I don’t say that capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction and the proletariat will inevitably rise up against the bourgeoisie, and in general I don’t put much stock in the idea that our political systems are in and of themselves sufficient for addressing our biggest problems in any meaningful way.

What I do advocate, over and over and over again in as many different ways as I can come up with, is a decentralized guerrilla psywar against the institutions which enable the powerful to manipulate the way ordinary people think, act and vote.

I talk about narrative and propaganda all the time because they are the root of all our problems. As long as the plutocrat-controlled media are able to manufacture consent for the status quo upon which those plutocrats built their respective empires, there will never be the possibility of a successful revolution. People will never rebel against a system while they’re being successfully propagandized not to. It will never, ever happen.

Most people who want drastic systematic changes to the way power operates in our society utterly fail to take this into account. Most of them are aware to some extent that establishment propaganda is happening, but they fail to fully appreciate its effects, its power, and the fact that it’s continually getting more and more sophisticated. They continue to talk about the need for a particular political movement, for this or that new government policy, or even for a full-fledged revolution, without ever turning and squarely focusing on the elephant in the room that none of these things will ever happen as long as most people are successfully propagandized into being uninterested in making them happen.

It’s like trying to light a fire without first finding a solution to the problem that you’re standing under pouring rain. Certainly we can all agree that a fire is sorely needed because it’s cold and wet and miserable out here, but we’re never going to get one going while the kindling is getting soaked and we can’t even get a match lit. The first order of business must necessarily be to find a way to protect our fire-starting area from the downpour of establishment propaganda.

A decentralized guerrilla psywar against the propaganda machine is the best solution to this problem.

By psywar I mean a grassroots psychological war against the establishment propaganda machine with the goal of weakening public trust in pro-empire narratives. People only believe sources of information that they trust, and propaganda cannot operate without belief. Right now trust in the mass media is at an all-time low while our ability to network and share information is at an all-time high. Our psywar is fought with the goal of using our unprecedented ability to circulate information to continue to kill public trust in the mass media, not with lies and propaganda, but with truth. If we can expose journalistic malpractice and the glaring plot holes in establishment narratives about things like war, Julian Assange, Russia etc, we will make the mass media look less trustworthy.

By decentralized I mean we should each take responsibility for weakening public trust in the propaganda machine in our own way, rather than depending on centralized groups and organizations. The more centralized an operation is, the easier it is for establishment manipulators to infiltrate and undermine it. This doesn’t mean that organizing is bad, it just means a successful grassroots psywar won’t depend on it. If we’re each watching for opportunities to weaken public trust in the official narrative makers on our own personal time and in our own unique way using videos, blogs, tweets, art, paper literature, conversations and demonstrations, we’ll be far more effective.

By guerrilla I mean constantly attacking different fronts in different ways, never staying with the same line of attack for long enough to allow the propagandists to develop a counter-narrative. If they build up particularly strong armor around one area, put it aside and expose their lies on an entirely different front. The propagandists are lying constantly, so there is never any shortage of soft targets. The only consistency should be in attacking the propaganda machine as visibly as possible.

As far as how to go about that attack, my best answer is that I’m leading by example here. I’m only ever doing the thing that I advocate, so if you want to know what I think we should all do, just watch what I do. I’m only ever using my own unique set of skills, knowledge and assets to attack the narrative control engine at whatever points I perceive to be the most vulnerable on a given day.

So do what I do, but keep in mind that each individual must sort out the particulars for themselves. We’ve each got our own strengths and abilities that we bring to the psywar: some of us are funny, some are artistic, some are really good at putting together information and presenting it in a particular format, some are good at finding and boosting other people’s high-quality attacks. Everyone brings something to the table. The important thing is to do whatever will draw the most public interest and attention to what you’re doing. Don’t shy away from speaking loud and shining bright.

It isn’t necessary to come up with your own complete How It Is narrative of exactly what is happening in our world right now; with the current degree of disinformation and government opacity that’s too difficult to do with any degree of completion anyway. All you need to do is wake people up in as many ways as possible to the fact that they’re being manipulated and deceived. Every newly opened pair of eyes makes a difference, and anything you can do to help facilitate that is energy well spent.

Without an effective propaganda machine, the empire cannot rule. Once we’ve crippled public trust in that machine, we’ll exist in a very different world already, and the next step will present itself from there. Until then, the attack on establishment propaganda should be our foremost priority.