Tuesday, 15 September 2015

Exorcist

(1973)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD

The Version You’ve Never Seen

The devil his due

Genuinely-disturbing horror with a topflight cast that delivers the genre goodies while leaving the religious, political & ethical issues largely untouched.

The characterization is deft and to the point; the style, scientifically-spooky, combined with excellent musical scoring choices that successfully mimics the way Stanley Kubrick used the best of music already composed. The Devil is characterized as a rebellious child who knows how to get under your skin via your fears; eg, orificial swearing & exploitation of guilt.

The problem here is that the demonic-possession plot is not worth worrying about because it is little more than fundamentalist nonsense. Whites possess only a nodding-acquaintance with their own demonic natures (which would have made for a much better film) and so have produced a disturbingly-evasive movie about the disturbingly-banal nature of the evil inherent in White culture. Unlike The Devils, this movie wallows uncritically in the sickness represented; making one wonder how sick White people really are in real life to have made such a bizarre movie.

The film is afflicted with a pious ambiguity that seeks to hide its true desire and to evade the complacent evil in all of its characters. Also, with a typical White hypocrisy born of years of practice: The Exorcist is desperately compulsive, precisely in the terror of its unbelief in its own pseudo-Christian premiss. The tail-wagging-the-dog SFX are meant to suggest reservoirs of courage, devotion & nobility, qualities with which the film is not in the least concerned, despite the movie beginning, superbly, in Iraq; effectively exploiting the uneasiness one feels when touched by the energy of distant gods and the spirit of the terror which informs the Christian-pagan argument.

The star of this movie is Satan; strangely underestimating everyone else here. His concerns are limited; his methods unsubtle. The movie is not concerned with damnation, an abysm far beyond the confines of its imagination, but with property, with safety, with capitalism, with the continued invulnerability of a certain class of people & the continued sanctification of White history as the only truth. A history Whites dare not scrutinize too closely for fear of it being as truly scary as this film is not.

The student uprising in the film (the leading lady is an actress starring in a campus-set movie) perfectly shows the dichotomy in White culture between ethical compromise and the truth. One line of dialog suggests the students should work within the system; neatly balanced by another, which suggests that the political perceptions of this film-within-a-film are more truthful than the satanic-possession story we are watching. This sets the stage for an alleged story of evil that never really touches on it; hence, the abject dependence on special effects to entertain the audience while distracting them from any analysis of real evil in the real world.

The mother runs away from the mysteries now being confronted by her growing daughter in horror at the demonic possession with all the apathy of the American middle class, reassuring herself that nothing she has done, or left undone, has irreparably damaged her child; who will grow up, therefore, to be as healthy and as wealthy as she. Almost analogous to the maturing of Whites into a culture which will suppress their humanity in favor of White supremacy - the unnamed evil here.

Along with the Christian fundamentalist mumbo-jumbo of levitating beds and discontented furniture, there is the young priest, tormented by guilt throughout; Satan ruthlessly playing on this. Satan also plays on the mother’s guilt concerning her failed marriage, her star status, her ambition, her relation to her daughter, her essentially empty, hypocritical & unanchored life: Her female emancipation from unreliable men. This uneasy and terrified guilt is the subtext of The Exorcist, which it cannot ever exorcise because it remains unconfronted.

The film is most terrifying for what it evades - along with its mindless and hysterical banality. It pretends to offer-up an encounter with the abyss of the human soul: That moment when no other human being is real for you, nor are you real for yourself. America (the only country to have perpetrated two genocides in such a short span of time) certainly knows more about evil than most. Yet, this devil needs no dogma, nor any historical justification; history being largely his invention. But, the real Devil does not levitate beds or fool around with little girls: We do.

Ultimately, it is the story of a Roman Catholic priest - and his crisis of faith - that makes the whole thing watchable. The priest is more possessed by (his own) demons than the exorcee; giving the Devil (& this film) its limited dramatic power since, without something positive to believe in, we are all tempted by the devil.

A highly-entertaining movie, by virtue of its superb direction and high-quality acting which, nevertheless, manages to trivialize evil in its masquerading as genuine horror, to tell a story lacking in genuine substance, purpose or imagination.

Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.
Posted by Frank TALKER™ at 13:20 0 comments
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Saturday, 12 September 2015

Spy Who Came In From The Cold

Purported Political Ends Trying to Justify the Actual Means

Summary: Turning over the rock of his own culture, a political spy sees only depravity.

Western political propaganda masquerading as insightful drama about both the Cold War and spying, as such - obviously based on the cases of Reinhard Gehlen and Heinz Felfe.

At variance with the actual facts of history, the West is initially-labeled benevolent in only utilizing nasty means for noble ends - while Communists are brutish in both means and ends. Yet, Communism post-dates Democracy and is merely a political abreaction to the hypocrisy of the latter; meaning that, in reality, both sides are just as bad as each other precisely because their goals are identical: Complete Political & Ideological domination of everyone else.

Both sides actually mirror one another in their rampant materialism and lovelessness. The current state of international terrorism reveals the inevitable results of believing that only your side is allowed to engage in systematic brutishness, while everyone else must fight fair. The lack of an ethical difference between the two antagonistic systems is not explored in this movie - as if it did not matter: But this evasion of such a difference is only true in propaganda, not in the fully-realized drama this film pretends to be. (One wonders if the author of the novel from which this small-hearted film is derived still works for the Secret Intelligence Service - posing as a novelist.)

Western democracy (only practiced when Whites are in the majority) is a political sham. The so-called values underpinning it (political loyalty to The State replacing personal loyalty to friends) are impractical since such values cannot be used effectively against its enemies when wars are most effectively fought by totalitarian states. Such political charades are the icing-on-the-cake of a Western political life that tries to conceal the amoral murkiness just beneath the surface. It is easy to understand a White becoming disillusioned-because-surprised, as here, by the mendacity caused by White cultural superficiality, but no other ethnic group has any illusions about the true nature of White people. Activities like the British Empire, the Holocaust & Slavery make their nature all-too-abundantly clear.

The story’s lack of authenticity (the source novel would never have been allowed in print if it had told the truth about actual intelligence work) makes it a metaphor for Western politics in being cynically-credible about the true nature of all White cultures. The values defended by spies are the same as Whites’ own personal ones in this looking-glass story of their inner bleakness: It tells the truth about Whites, without compromising National security.

This morality play asks a simple question: How far will White people go in defence of values they claim to hold dear? It answers by saying: All the way (since those values are those of expediency - which has no ethical boundaries). The ends justify any means - even when one is doing no more than hiding the fact that ones values are so utterly shabby. Any other values Whites pretend to defend simply propagandize White electorates for the sole purpose of winning elections - elections whose sole purpose is to convince Whites that they value democracy.

Apart from the superficial politics of the movie, there is also the problem of the overly-intricate plotting - a scheme of almost superhuman subtlety. It relies on so many human variables - and the attendant vagaries of human nature - that one wonders if such Machiavellian plots could actually work in real-life. Or are they just the frustrated, confidence-trickster daydreams of impotent bureaucrats?

Where this film scores is in the realm of the always-fashionable White existential despair caused by the volitional White ignorance of the actual workings of the White world. Such a world seeks to preserve its social system - against any and all alternatives - while actively despising that very system for offering no possibility of personal fulfillment. The ending makes clear the kind of life open to the inhabitants of White culture should they ever hope to find love within its confines. Like a convention of neurotics, the characters cling to one another for the very sustenance unavailable to their kind: Brilliantly illustrated by flawless acting. Despite this neurosis never being thematically-explored, the film’s bleakness is well-served by its black & white photography; while its black and white moralizing never gets to the fons et origo of such hopelessness - as if it were, indeed, as causeless and as globally-universal as pretended here.

Posted by Frank TALKER™ at 16:41 0 comments
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Friday, 11 September 2015

Experiment

QED

English-language remakes of foreign-language originals are usually inferior simplifications

Christian propaganda for the redemptive power of sexual love, with murder as the first postlapsarian sin of Man.

Summary: White culture for the uninitiated.

Interesting exploration of inherent White violence and emotional repression, along with the allegedly-essentialistic justifications for them. Also, an analogy for the way in which Whites raise their children as alienated and powerless entities trapped in an emotional space where they have no overall control and, so, are easier to train to compensate by acting-out their rage against those they allege are inferior (&, thus, deserving of the resulting hostility). Such a White-created world is designed to justify the White amorality on show here.

The film begins with animals fighting - despite the fact that the vast majority of animals do not predate one another - and humans (mostly the global minority: Caucasians) engaging in irrational violence. This suggests violence as an irrepressible human instinct, rather than a circular piece of White wishful-thinking used to justify such violence - as well as serving the desire of evading guilt and personal responsibility for such behavior.

We are required to believe that the endemic nature of the inappropriate-aggression of White culture results from the basic facts of human nature, rather than from White supremacy: An obvious dishonesty that hurts the integrity of the movie. Worst of all, those Whites who renounce violence as a solution to problems are shown as weak and evasive people who wish to evade the same problems, responsibilities and, ultimately, solutions that their so-called weakness cannot provide.

The fundamental unreality of the situation presented here never seems to fully occur to any of the characters - or even the screenplay. These people are also, thus, psychologically-locked into culturally-determined roles; suggesting an inability to think rationally, as well as being more than willing to follow senseless rules that were only invented for the sake of control - not social order: As if Whites actually need rigid rules in order to feel anything like normal human beings. That some of the characters take their temporary roles too seriously - because they have otherwise empty lives - is not fully explored, since we never discover why their lives outside the experiment are so bleak that this experiment could in any way provide solace for them. What other culture would feel the need to produce such an odd drama about its own people that evades the very important issues it raises?

As an exploration of the banality of evil, this movie does not explain why Whites lose focus on the goal here (money) and choose to obsess on an amoral means of obtaining it, rather than simply biding their time by, say, playing cards for the alloted two-weeks’s duration of the experiment.

The reason the movie leaves unexamined is that White amorality produces White paranoia - a distraction from civilized enterprise. For Whites, power is a greater aphrodisiac than money - or even women - because it creates the illusion that following any rules makes one just as powerful as those who created them, without the need for great effort on the part of those who thus enslave themselves. Yet, all it really proves is that one is scared to disobey arbitrary rules and create wealth ethically: A solace for the inherently-political nature of all White relationships and the resultant lack of mutual support and a strong sense of identity which they contain.

What is good here is that - given the thin characterization - the quality of the actors makes the whole thing a watchable time-passer. Yet, one wonders why Whites would be unable to see the difference between working together (to get what they all want) and internecine self-destruction. The movie queers its own pitch by creating a situation that will inevitably lead to violence in order to prove that Whites (&, by implied extension, all other ethnic groups) are violent and cannot work together. This, as a direct result of the rigidly-hierarchical nature of a White culture that creates a similar wallowing in violence in real-life. Instead of an insightful dramatic exploration of violence, as such, all we really learn is that White culture is violent and that other cultures should fear White people.

Posted by Frank TALKER™ at 10:52 0 comments
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Saturday, 5 September 2015

Battle of the Sexes

…And never a cease-fire.

Summary: The usual Caucasian conflation of the Personal with the Political.

Typical example of the White view that the sex-war is necessarily a set of political battles for supremacy - rather than anything based on equality.

Because White culture is rigidly-hierarchical - rather than egalitarian - it is hardly surprising that personal relationships (ideally, share-and-share-alike) would mimic White political arrangements (ideally, give-and-take) to produce excessive rates of divorce, loneliness, spousal abuse, pornography, alcoholism, etc.

One wonders if Whites actually like each other when watching a movie like this - and if their lack of fulfilling personal relationships explains their difficulty in such social activities as smiling.

The characterization is thin, the story & themes are not well-developed and only the topflight performers keep you watching.

Posted by Frank TALKER™ at 17:00 0 comments
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Science:



No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.



Jacob Bronowski… (1908 - 74), British scientist, author. Encounter (London, July 1971).


Sleep of Reason:



The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.



Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes… (1746-1828), Spanish painter. Caption to Caprichos, number 43, a series of eighty etchings completed in 1798, satirical and grotesque in form.


Humans & Aliens:



I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.



Terence… (circa 190-159 BC), Roman dramatist. Chremes, in The Self-Tormentor [Heauton Timorumenos], act 1, scene 1.


Führerprinzip:



One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.



Albert Camus… (1913-60), French-Algerian writer & philosopher. The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt: New York: Vintage Books, (1984; page 182.)