OWLS

[porphyry]

I took the children to see the owls movie today, the first time I'd been to the theater since Andrew was born.

It could have been much worse. There is little need to say anything beyond the conflict portrayed in the film was between Hippies and Nazis, leaving one little to choose (the first sign that the hero's brother was ripe to become a Nazi was when he rejected nationalist myth in favor of reasoned analysis, not the most penetrating analysis of the Nazi movement).

But this conversation followed.

"So, Andrew, the gizzard is an organ that birds possess, where they grind their food against rocks, since they don't have teeth. The owls in the film spoke of the gizzard as the seat of emotion, the way we would the heart.So when they made a distinction between the head and the gizzard, they meant between reason and emotion. So, when the old owl general took the young owl out flying in the storm and told him that he would always fail as long as he listened to his head, and only had a chance of success if he instead listened to his gizzard, was that true? In fact, aren't the emotions that originate in the body so destructive and chaotic that the mind must always work to keep them in check, and doesn't it possess the organ of the hegemonikon expressly for that purpose?"

"Yes."

"Even in the film, weren't the wicked owls motivated by greed and the desire to enslave and dominate other species of owls? Aren't desires like that related to bodily emotions like fear and anger? So isn't it the wicked owls who listened to their gizzards. while the good owls triumphed by using their imaginations to see what they had to do to win through, despite what they said."

"Somehow, Dada, I think you must be right."

In any case, to judge from the previews, Hollywood intends to continue to make only remakes of old films with CGI and 3-D, including Yogi Bear and the Smurfs. Most disturbing was the preview for the Harry Potter film. The production designers of that film had evidently gone to film school and decided to reuse one of the most beautiful images ever put on celluloid, but, in its new context, irresistibly transformed it into kitsch.

I'm referring to the forest journey from Lang's Siegfried:

From LJ

(No idea how Lang filmed that: if those are prop trees,or, what seems incredible, there could be a real forest that looked like that, but in the potter, of course, its CGI).

Comments

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

My poor baby. Getting quizzed after going to see a movie.

[ansat.livejournal.com]

I saw that film as well, and I had the same question after it that I did after reading the Harry Potter books: Why is it that Commonwealth children's books always seem to be refighting World War II? Is the threat of incipient Nazism among the youth of the Anglophone world so omnipresent?

[clodia-metelli.livejournal.com]

What a Socratic conversation! I think I shall pass on that film... the photo is beautiful, though.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

My dad only took us to see The Junglebook (where he laughed himself silly at the halted oliphaunt march, for whatever political reason) and anything by his alltime favourite Tati. Also, the impressive premiere of Star Wars I, to which I received elaborate explanations about the making of old and new machines hanging over the one of our Morris Minor later. My father always said, he knew nothing about technical stuff, he was just curious.
So,
being of a somewhat similar mindset (always a dilettante but still curious cat;) I googled the Siegfried forest and it appears it was filmed in the UFA studios (that I sadly missed to visit in Berlin): "The stylised sets create a mysterious beauty, especially the misty forest (constructed in a Zeppelin hangar)" the quote is from this site: http://www.leninimports.com/fritz_lang_the_nibelungen.html I must say I like the combination, Siegfried & Zeppelin appeals to my kind of humour...

One of the to me more credible views (not to say analysis) of the nazis and how they managed to capture so many minds is, that they were in essence, a sect. Which is of course not a sufficient explanation but I still find it interesting because to me the way they were able to invade and persuade people´s brains, is and I do see some similarities in "brainwash technique", there.
The very real "fear of freedom" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fear_of_Freedom that appears to appear where reason ends, etc.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Thanks for looking up that business about Lang.

I am not aware of anything the Nazis did to brainwash people. They wanted to become Nazis.

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

I like your conversation with Andrew. The hegemonikon? Did you really use that word?

Hmm, I don't know if the conscience really sits in the brain, but I'm sure that acting by raw instinct is a less human option. Oh my, over the last few years I've so often doubted about my own position on ethical questions, it's disgraceful. For me it's not easy to recognize the principles on which to base my actions under changing circumstances. The older I get the more I feel that people just can't help impeding each other, no matter how much we try to get along by establishing well-meant rules. (Schopenhauer's simile of the freezing porcupines, that's me. And I don't think that any amount of feeling or thinking will improve their dilemma.)

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Indeed, I told him all about the hegemonikon last summer, principally because is too week to prevent him picking violent quarrels with his sister too frequently. I even told him Epictetus's exercise to strengthen it, to make an effort to deny yourself whatever you most want to do, symbolized by taking a drink of water after exercising on a hot day and spitting it out rather than swallowing. Madeline overheard this, and for the rest of the summer would spit water out on the sidewalk, point to it, and say, "'monikon!"

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I couldn't dio this without suspecting myself of hypocrisy, but good idea to pick up Epictetus. A mutual friend of ours made a translation of him, if I'm not mistaken.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Its true that my own hegemonikon needs plenty of building up, but hat is no reason not to try to help him.

Yes, he did, didn't he?