Saved from Facebook…<\/p>\n
A post by Adam-Troy Castro<\/a>: <\/p>\n \nNoted in a thread: <\/p>\n Somebody (I forget who) told the story of leaving A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE as one of two teenage couples, being absolutely gobsmacked by it, and listening to his friends spend the next ten minutes tearing it to pieces as ugly and boring and about people nobody could possibly ever care about, and finally asking him what he thought, at which point he said that it was brilliant and that he would never be the same. <\/p>\n As I note below, I have experienced this multiple times. Walking out of some fucking masterpiece and having people say, Wasn’t that the worst movie, ever? And me saying, no…<\/p>\n Another one, by the way, was NASHVILLE. And another was 3 WOMEN. And another was A PASSAGE TO INDIA. And another was MILLER’S CROSSING. And another was FARGO. And another one was DELICATESSEN. The most recent one was THE LOBSTER. In all those cases, I was confronted by people, sometimes fellow theatergoers, sometimes friends, who sought in me confirmation that I agreed we had just seen a total piece of garbage, usually phrased as “the worst movie ever made.” In all cases I said, “Nope.” <\/p>\n It feels disconcerting at the time.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n One point here is that some people lack the imagination to understand that other people might have different tastes than their own; or, if this isn\u2019t the same thing, are so egotistical to think their view of the world is the only valid one.<\/p>\n ATC made another point recently about are conservatives in general are less open to unusual experiences, because, well, they\u2019re conservative\u2026<\/p>\n \\\\<\/p>\n Timothy Egan in NYT: The Week the Earth Stood Still<\/a>.<\/p>\n He wonders to what extent the world \u2018stood still,\u2019 i.e. was distracted from relatively petty issues, by the recent total solar eclipse, with some reference to how that happened in a famous 1950s science fiction film.<\/p>\n \nIf we won\u2019t listen to science, maybe we\u2019ll listen to science fiction. I keep thinking of a movie I saw as a kid, \u201cThe Day the Earth Stood Still,\u201d about a time when all the world\u2019s trivial matters were briefly put aside to gasp in awe at a spaceship landing on Earth.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s no concern of ours how you run your own planet,\u201d says the alien, Klaatu, \u201cbut if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder.\u201d The reference in that 1951 film was to nuclear annihilation. And today, the smartest military men count the global insecurity and chaos of climate change as an existential threat on a par with nuclear disaster.<\/p>\n Many people experienced a standstill moment after that stunning picture of an earthrise came to light, taken by Apollo 8 astronauts during Christmas week of 1968. There from the infinity of space was our insignificant little blue and white orb \u2014 us! \u2014 a grain of sand in the universe. The image roused our capacity for wonder, and dread.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (Of course the eclipse wasn\u2019t such a big deal outside the US.)<\/p>\n \\\\<\/p>\n The New Yorker: \u201cThe Radical Origins of Christianity\u201d<\/a>; Subtitle, \u201cEmmanuel Carr\u00e8re\u2019s ‘The Kingdom’ explores how a tiny sect became a global religion.”<\/p>\n A favorite theme of mine, the role of contingency (or randomness) in world history. And personal history. (Most things do not happen for a reason.) With references to the works of Philip K. Dick.<\/p>\n \nA question haunts this book, and it is surely the secret reason that Carr\u00e8re wrote his biography of Philip K. Dick: Is Christianity just science fiction, a \u201cbranch of fantastic literature\u201d? He can\u2019t leave Dick alone, partly because Dick was a writer of fantastic literature who eventually came to believe that God was speaking directly to him, as he had spoken to men like Moses and Muhammad. For Dick, God supplanted the extraterrestrials. In a speech in France, late in his life, he told a bemused audience of sci-fi fans that he\u2019d \u201chad direct contact with the Programmer,\u201d as Carr\u00e8re puts it. There are certain atheists who have no compunction about dismissing fervent believers as victims of delusion and hallucination. But Carr\u00e8re\u2019s book about Dick vibrates with a profoundly uneasy respect.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Saved from Facebook… A post by Adam-Troy Castro: Noted in a thread: Somebody (I forget who) told the story of leaving A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE as one of two teenage couples, being absolutely gobsmacked by it, and listening to his … Continue reading