8 posts tagged “movies”
James' post on WALL E as well as my recent turn on my other blog (though I'm learning about human characterizations of passions there) has made me think of personifications in movies, especially cartoons and animated movies. We are used to animals acting and speaking like, and thus personifying humans, and then toys doing so in Toy Story, and now it's WALL E, the robot acting like a human. Even more so than the people in Narnia, as James observes. My developing theory is that we have a very high expectation of how humans should act. "Should" being the key word. They should be intelligent, consistent, brave, virtuous, etc. We are very critical of ourselves and others. But we do not have such high expectations of animals. They are "lower" and are appreciated mostly for their cuteness and vulnerability. We relax around them. And relaxing actually makes us more true to ourselves. So if the creators and the audience are relaxed in the presence of a non-threatening bunny for instance, maybe they and we can be more ourselves through the bunny, if that makes sense. Any human activity, like talking, pestering, playing practical jokes is impressive if a bunny does it. More so in fact.
Back to WALL E, I'll speak of the first part so's not to give too much away. What if he'd been a lone human person similarly cleaning up the garbage left behind by the departed humans. One, he would have been more connected to the ones departed, in our minds, perhaps even sharing responsibility. And there would have been a complication with how he was bonded, or not so, with his parents. Having him be a robot programmed by humans for a specific task lets us blame short-sighted humans as a whole and not specific people/parents. He is different than other robots though in that he bonds to things emotionally. Therefore we as humans can relate to him. We can personify our instinctive bond with created things through him, but his is untainted by passions - greed, lust of power, laziness, impulsiveness, lack of planning, etc. that got the earth in that shape in the first place. The robot is innocent of these things as a child is. Somehow he is impervious to temptation, which is how we "should" become, and which is indeed our fundamental state. The passions are an anomaly that we have sadly gotten used to and have developed a habit, after the Fall, of being lead by them, which - I have learned through Orthodox teaching - is unnatural. We are naturally innocent and virtuous like the robots, toys, and animals in stories. Writing about them and reading/watching them is a way to get in touch with that buried humanity by letting our guards down. Somehow, because of passions either in us or in others, when we are dealing with humans, our guard gets up and we get stiff and rigid - more like a robot and less like a human - how's that for irony? Iron - get it?
p.s. the other day I tried to post a couple of new home videos but they would not upload so that's why it said I posted when I didn't.
Netflix sent two foreign language films to our house this last weekend which we watched while most of us had the flu. El Padrecito, (1964) about an aging traditional Catholic Priest who is being replaced by a young fresh Priest, and Himalaya, a beautiful, real life story about traditional life in Tibet.
I have lately been exploring the anti-tradition movement which climaxed in the 60's. El Padrecito celebrates this movement by sympathizing with the charismatic upstart priest who wears a controversial mustache, confronts the "tyranical rich guy who is oppressing the town and stifling education", questions the need for kids to go to confession, plays jazz on the church organ while people are praying, and the last straw that made us turn it off, was when he put sunglasses on a religious statue. We didn't find this stuff funny.
During the 60's there is such a consistent portrayal of authority and outdated tradition as tyrannically oppressive. I'm more exposed to it in movies but I understand it was prevalent in universities, fashion, and religious settings. Maybe some of it was tyrannically oppressive, but the rebellion that followed this examination was incited by simplistic black and white stereotypes which aren't so stark in reality, except in rare cases. In my other blog I talk about the vilification of suffering. The movie Le Choriste is another example where I thought they made way too big a deal about how horrible it was that the boy had to scrub the floor. There were plenty of other bad things to point out, working hard with your muscles isn't one of them.
However Himalaya sympathized mostly with the traditionalist older chief who clashed with the "scientific and rational" younger rival. I am very impressed with the love, humor, drama, and beauty of this French made film. It had enough action that the kids liked it too. Caution, there was one brief fast-forward moment towards the end.
His office resumes post holiday hours today, but he asked for the rest of the week off, cause he just don't wanna go back. He puts in lots of hours and usually doesn't take all his vacation days, as hardly anyone does there because of tons of deadline pressures. But he's skipping out the rest of the week, Yay!
Unbeknown to us, Meet the Robinsons, which we saw last night, is a good New Years movie. The theme is Keep Moving Forward, and letting go of the past. I mostly agree with this theme, except I think he went a bit far in forgetting the past. We should forget being offended, but we don't have to wipe people out. This isn't to say we have to spend a lot of energy reconciling or trying to establish a relationship with "offenders", but completely forgetting about them can be an act of revenge. The first step toward forgiveness is praying for the person, as my Priest says. Orthodox prayer is very simple, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner". This is a prayer of submission. It isn't trying to dictate to God what he should do with other people, but instead asking him to bestow healing love on me. I think I've read one person, maybe Elder Porphyrios, say that you can insert the name of the person at the end, but I also read you can remember other people while you say "me, a sinner". This is an existential thing to do in that we believe the whole cosmos, God, the saints, and everyone dwell in our hearts. So when our heart is healed, it does affect everyone and everything else. And remembering others in the context of me a sinner acknowledges my relationship with them and that my perception of them affects who I think they are, and that may need to be healed. We have other prayers for others as well, like God bless, keep, comfort, and heal them, which is what His mercy is all about.
Don, the eloquent story-teller, tagged me for to share my favorite Christmas memories in the circulating Meme. I'm going to cheat by using Youtube videos, but really, watching the movies and the shows depicted below have taken me to that warm, charmed, transcendent place better than about any real life memory I can think of. Not to say that watching movies isn't a real experience...
I especially liked Don's snow scene while driving alone in his car (but please read all four of his stories). I suppose that watching snow fall while alone takes me there too. When I first was rejoined with Andy Williams and the Williams Brothers Christmas album a few years ago, and listened to it alone in my tree-lit, but otherwise dark, living room, I was taken back to that place of my earliest memories of listening to it over and over. I can't share those songs because they are copied onto my CD, and besides I really want to stick with these scenes.
First, Linus sharing the true meaning of Christmas,
I love the debut of Irving Berlin's White Christmas in the movie, Holiday Inn. Please stick around for the second verse for the harmony and tinkling of the bells on the real candle-lit Christmas tree.
Judy Garland was never lovelier or heartfelt, except for Somewhere Over the Rainbow, than in this scene in Meet Me in St. Louis, where she sings Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
Merry Christmas! And God bless us every one.
I'll tag Matushka Elizabeth, her lovely daughter and her other lovely daughter and our friends Jo and Holly who have non-public blogs, my son and my other son and my other son, who have public blogs (that's 4 public ones so far), and the new blogger, Maxim.
Wives and Daughters, based on the 19th century novel by Elizabeth Gaskell, who got passed my radar until Matushka
Elizabeth's daughters introduced her to me a couple of years ago, impressed me more after viewing it again recently. The first time I saw it I was angrier at the not so respectable characters. This time I saw how her characters are very complex and I noticed subtle redeeming behaviors, such as the development of self control and unselfish motivations that I missed the first time. I find her characters much deeper and well-rounded than Jane Austen's, who can be caricature-ish and cartoony, but there are similarities in the heroes and heroins. The BBC did a beautiful job making two extended versions of her novels, the other being North and South which to me is a cross between Pride and Prejudice and Dickens' Oliver Twist.
"I myself am often surprised by life's little quirks."
