Pajamas

[porphyry]

Andrew needs new pajamas because of the changes in the season and his height (and nearly his girth, the inactivity of the cast had its effects).

The four pair he has now are all spiderman themed.

Why can't we get some that are, for instance, Orlando Furioso Themed? What could decorate a night shirt with more grace than Angelica fleeing with Medoro and Orlando pursuing, uprooting the odd towering oak and dispatching barehanded a few bears on the way? What red-blooded boy wouldn't like to see on his PJ top Bradamante wooing...whatever her name was (although that theme might be more popualr with teeneagers)?

Really, though, you'd think you'd at least be able to get King Arthur.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I think you're right.

What I was thinking of was not the choice between the two Ladies, but the idea that Virtue is to be presented as the more attractive, not only the more heroic option (e.g. in Politeia 360e-367). Just as educators nowadays try to make non-smoking look "cool".

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. Since when is the virtuous path the more seductive, for God's sake?

[(Anonymous)]

And that's what Plato seemed to have had in mind. To give a real life Utopian example: Will H. Hay's "Motion Picture Production Code of 1930" tried to correct entertainment to raise the moral standards of society.*

He says so quite explicetly: "No picture should lower the moral standards of those who see it. This is done: (a) When evil is made to appear attractive, and good is made to appear unattractive. (b) When the sympathy of the audience is thrown on the side of crime, wrong-doing, evil, sin. The same thing is true of a film that would throw sympathy against goodness, honor, innocence, purity, honesty."

I think Montaigne's method is a more liberal one, but he still wants the child to choose Bradamante=Minerva=Virtue before Angelica=Venus=Depravity by making Angelica look unattractive. ("Make him sensible, that the gods have planted more toil and sweat in the avenues of the cabinets of Venus than in those of Minerva.")
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*Actually, this Code was an emergency measure to prevent the dangers of Boycott and Censure, not the crusade of a moralist. But still it effected so drastical changes that from 1935 on American movies appear rather dull in my opinion.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Well, there you go, the dulling effect is obvious.

To return to the Republic, just as Plato would have outlawed tragedy, the Hayes code would have made it impossible to film Oedipus or Medea since the very point of those plays is that is impossible to tell if the protagonsit is good or evil, which actually seems to me a much more satisfying trope.

To return to Montaigne, the problem is that you don't get to depcit good and evil as you wish, they merely exist as they are, and evil is often terribly seductive. I recall in this connection Epictetus' treatment of the subject. If you have a 15 year old philosophy student, and a serving girl, well, you know what is going to happen reguardless of how you lecture him; but he won't be 15 for ever.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

All I have to say is, if Marlon Brando had come to my door (before I met you, of course) with a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth, that would have been a really great ethical problem as opposed to, say, a rabbi or a minister looking to show me the path to virtue.