I watched (1985) The Shooting Party, a weekend on a country estate in soon-to-be dismantled Edwardian England. It is 1913 and the impending war will change much. James Mason's last film performance.
Premonitions of the rise of the social welfare state, class conflict, romantic pacifism, loony animal rights and the landed aristocracy losing a sense of purpose. The slaughter of the birds by the men presaging the slaughter of the men by other men.
Altman's 2001 Gosford Park showed that the shooting parties were still going on in the 30's --another pre-war precipice-- but you can see the transformation in the characters, even as the structures remain somewhat in place. (I wonder if Altman ever acknowledged the likenesses, which are many.)
A note once more about my utter tone-deafness to female allure. Pauline Kael had this to say about one of the actresses and her character:
Premonitions of the rise of the social welfare state, class conflict, romantic pacifism, loony animal rights and the landed aristocracy losing a sense of purpose. The slaughter of the birds by the men presaging the slaughter of the men by other men.
Altman's 2001 Gosford Park showed that the shooting parties were still going on in the 30's --another pre-war precipice-- but you can see the transformation in the characters, even as the structures remain somewhat in place. (I wonder if Altman ever acknowledged the likenesses, which are many.)
A note once more about my utter tone-deafness to female allure. Pauline Kael had this to say about one of the actresses and her character:
And Judi Bowker as the guileless Lady Olivia, the wife of thick-headed Lord Lilburn (Robert Hardy), looks at the camera with a direct gaze that makes her seem infinitely beautiful. When the tall, slim young barrister Lionel Stephens (Rupert Frazer), declares his love for her, you think, Of course - how could he look into her clear eyes and not imagine depths of mystery?"
Well, she certainly stood out among the women, but all I could see in "her clear eyes" were depths of vacuity, somewhere in the neighborhood between a porcelain doll and a retarded child. She often has played these types: Claire of Assisi in Brother Sun Sister Moon,
Where some see mysterious unearthly beauty, I see an empty and annoying shell. She is a more reticent version of similarly doll-like actress Amanda Seyfried, whose feminist self-esteem drives the gleeful narcissism of her characters.
In a strange way, The Shooting Party reminded me of The Misfits (1961), which also featured a brainless and hysterically sentimental anima woman, Marilyn Monroe, bewitching men whose world is also on the brink of extinction.
Aside from Ms Bowker, I liked the film quite a lot.
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Ex Cathedra perhaps isn't so unusual in feeling 'tone deaf' vis-a-vis womengirls in movies and TV shows and politics and celebrityhood in general. My sense is that the aggressive attentions of agents, paparazzi, the general public, gossip columnists, in such environments inevitably and thoroughly comprehensibly harden, deaden, personae.
Thanatos across a man's personae maybe doesn't seem so bad a thing: emotionlessness can seem 'masculine' in a way, and definitely emergency situations require emotional repression, especially from men.
But the glory of a womangirl strikes me most in a kind of neediness and vulnerableness -- which isn't to say powerlessness, for vulnerability is tremendously overwhelming, 'disarming' as one says.
Consider the non unsimilar vulnerableness of a baby utterly dissolves the thanatos of civilization -- when a baby is held by pope or president, the baby will and especially may, has a right to, grab the personage's hair, nose, yarmulke, etc just as he may any other object within reach.
With a tender, living salute to his father's coffin in the funeral parade, little john-john provides life and tenderness for a rite of thanatos. In comparison, all the suspicions of all the conspiracy theorists in the world to bring living significance to the father's death are futile.
In sum, the sirens of the screen seldom or maybe never have the glory that one may see in womengirls on college campuses, at the supermarket etc.
But about the ends of aions, it is strange that wars [devourings; bread; sacrament of eucharist LChM js3898ff, 3894. Jesus was born Christ child in Bethlehem, the house of war] are necessary at all. Against Machiavelli, Western Christendom rally'd herself into strength perpetuated as 'little ice age' (Leibniz), but ultimately biblical dominion founded in grace was not accepted (Rousseau, Enlightenment, Revolution, and leftwing or historical advance by Hegelianism or becomingism [Gay Science ¶357]). They wanted Christian obedience to moral authority but without Christian doctrine. Thus dialectical materialism, evolutionism, positivist scientific method over science, legal formalism rather than jurisprudence, medicalization of the psyche, etc.
This continues up to this day: one condemns Christianity -- everything in Christianity that isn't interpretable as doctrine-free social justice spirituality -- as if possibly the stuff the Christian meaning system (manna) names wouldn't have happen'd if the meaning system had been suppress'd. Yet it is difficult to see even via critical theory how Christian meaning systems caused the continuous pious cruelties of military violence, exterminations, enslavements, etc in pre-Christian Japan, China, India, Africa, the Americas, not to mention pre-Christian Europe.
In any case, wasn't "Edwardian England" already only a façade unconnected to reality by 1913? The last attempt at the glory of Christian France was based entirely on nationalistic anti-semitism (Anti-Dreyfus).
But since masks are loved (Nietzsche BGE ¶40), why destroy the mask? ... I guess Eros-Thanatos loves to come forth from his masks. When religion refuses Eros-Thanatos theistic satisfaction (BGE ¶53), this God demands consummation by 'direct action' in _the_ world -- thus pre-WW1 Europe and Russia crawling with 'anarchists baying for blood' etc. Even the Internationalist Workers et al couldn't not participate in the Great War. Suffragettes supported conscription.
»In pre-war London a _Sacre_, a Nijin sky, a Stravin sky, a Mat isse, a Van Gog h seem to be the very sound and shadow of time's wingèd chariot, which, with its terrible occupant, was still [qua unmoved mover? in styling?] at the back of a doomed world, unheard but hurrying near.« (George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England, pp. 428f)
Freud after a manner religiously civilized the new vision and reality, including the wars thereof. Atheistic vis-a-vis the biblical God, he nevertheless provided theistic satisfaction vis-a-vis the themes of Greek myth. But desublimation has rejected Freud's new ascetic ideal religion in the superego. Friedan drove her new suffragettes against Freud. ...
Now everyone is rabble. Is this sufficient for Nature? If so, and no grand immolation (food, war, js3898) results, we may even be glad at the trade-off. It's like now everyone is behaving that a major war has proved monogamy, sublimation, etc is bunk, and the truth is porno etc. Thus, no need to have the priests of monogamy and sublimation preach up a war in order to prove that they deem love in the world a repression. Admittedly, an exchange of sublimation for freedom from war is not a devotion to war for its own sake. But perhaps in light of this consideration we are doing desublimation for its own sake. Can Eros-Thanatos be satisfy'd with that devotion to desublimation?
Back to concern about health care reform, eh? and whether Biden or Romney was the more egregious mean person when young, and whether the puppy mill from which the White House dog was bought is is a worse violation of animal rights than putting a dog on the roof of a care for a dream vacation to Canada (during an era when children roam'd around in cars without seatbelts).
Yet maybe in order to do my part to stave off a feast like WW1 I need to take such 'issues' seriously and help keep Eros-Thanatos satisfy'd with desublimation.
P.S. Except for the 60,000-year reprieve recently given to us by the revised Mayan Calendar, one could have supposed that the hollywood Misfits movie is to 2012 what Arthur Schopenhauer's pessimism was to 1914. ...
She wasn’t in “Agnes of God”. That character was played by another lovely child/woman actress, Meg Tilly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_of_God_%28film%29
Judi Bowker also made an excellent Mina, in a British television version of Count Dracula (1977):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Dracula_%281977%29
I love your blog, but I can’t help but detect stealth misogyny in your attitude toward women. I see this also in Jack Donovan, whom I generally enjoy. I have to be honest. I can’t really respect a man, regardless of his orientation, who is totally immune to the charms of a beautiful woman. Yes, I’m queer, but not exclusively so. It baffles me how you thought Elizabeth Taylor was bad in “Raintree County”. I take it, lovely vulnerable women; don’t appeal to you at all. You’re probably not a fan of Lillian Gish, Elizabeth Hartman, Olivia Hussey, or Princess Diana. I do appreciate that you read Pauline Kael, who is the best film critic in the world, in my opinion. I also enjoyed “The Shooting Party”. The entire cast was great. I hope you also read Camille Paglia, who I also think is great.
Thanks to Anonymous for his comment and correction. I'm gonna post something in reply.
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