Scrooby's Musings

Started by Scrooby, March 08, 2022, 12:28:53 AM

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Scrooby

Hello, Friends. Picking a shot at random for fun. Each entry is a bullet-point for Thought :



Character on right framed in white light and window.

Alma is associated with electric light, dim at this time.

Note the fineness of hair of the character on the right compared to Alma's.

Note the stately outline of the profile of the character on the right compared to the looser, less sharp, less elegantly composed outline and bulk of Alma.

Alma is in black.

An association between the two characters : their skin looks similar in quality?

Is Alma a bit taller (aggression)?

Telephoto : the woman at lower screen-center is looking in Alma's direction (thinking in an abstract way here—a film frame as a composition of geometrical shapes). This woman communicates visually the concept of : barrier. (And whatever else. Example : triangle. ) The telephoto woman looking in Alma's direction invests Alma with an extra power. This gives Alma an edge.
 
We could go on infinitely. In fact, we're already in Infinity and condensing it moment-by-moment to a manageable degree according to our faculties.

Good luck and best wishes and bwee until the next



Scrooby

Phantom Thread : "I think it's the expectations and assumptions of others that cause heartache." Sure, but if the Artist prepared her for the Situation, the Artist might help to avert a heartache. That said, how does someone say something to anyone about anything?

Scrooby

Complete Poems. Coming 2023. Absolutely Free! Love, Scrooby.




Scrooby

Today's random shot.

1:21:43



Duality of Dark and Light on face.

Note painting on wall. Mass of bodies. See The Welles' The Stranger (1946), 59.39 :



What haunts her is made manifest on screen.

The film frame is a dream of the audience, but also of the character(s) who embody it.

What is in the frame embodies unconscious elements of the character(s) within the frame.

In short : First-rate storytelling uses very last detail to express character.

Best wishes.





Scrooby

Catastrophic Jack-O-Lantern (2010)





from a novel unpublished by the women of London.

Scrooby


(1:01)


Dunkirk (1:04:49)

Scrooby

(1:21:56)   Random shot of the day



As always (it seems), duality of light and dark on Alma's face. Both characters are wearing dark garments : union. "Mother is here." (Vertigo.) The elegant powder-blue Hal-9000-shaped quadrangle behind Woodcock's head. The three different shades of blue. A blue grading into grey. Such elegant subtlety. We're sipping the finest of wines. The cool blue and the flame orange. When before have we seen Alma so ingenuously concentrating? Recall her usual distractedness when wearing Woodcock's garments (e.g., their first-date measurement scene; the "Cyril is always right" scene). Here, Alma looks as in-the-moment as she's been in the movie. (The first time we see her, she trips up. An amusing 1930s conceit.) But here : she's fierce in her concentration to help the stricken. A flashback? A repetition compulsion, like The Shining? She is doomed to relive the horrors of her past? She is one of those characters that fill the first page of Seneca's plays, the various souls in Hell doomed to relive old torments infinitely? But she also has a mania to "make good" : she can "fix" Woodcock. Contradiction : a barrier comes between the two faces : the vertical doorframe. (Consider the old superstition about not abiding barriers between friends : a demonstration of this superstition is shown in Citizen Kane, between Leland and Kane. The superstition is : say you're walking on the street with someone you love, and you come to a streetlamp. Now, the two should pass by one side together. If the streetlamp comes between them, one or the other must retrace one's steps and follow the path of the other, so that no barrier comes between them. Bad luck may otherwise eventuate.) Here, though, the barrier. But also the contradiction : because the wall in the distance has its horizontal chair rail. This architectural detail links the two characters like an umbilical cord in a Cronenberg movie. Note the highlight on the top of the door frame. Is that required, do you think? Or is the following a better way of putting it : if the highlight is there, it should be there, because it makes things better, even if we haven't understood it yet. How do we know this highlight makes things better? (Which is another way of saying : How do we know this highlight contributes to the magic of the shot?) Because PTA designed this shot. Since PTA is a first-rate storyteller, we cannot overanalyse his work. We can only keep thinking about it, and thereby learn from it. A great storyteller is a blessing. A great Artist gives us something worthwhile to think about endlessly.

Scrooby

Writer/director Stephen King receives a message at the start of Maximum Overdrive (1986)





Scrooby

THE MASTER : an examination



1. Freddy / Dodd = Two Sides of PTA

2. Dodd's Teachings : Analysis

3. Women in The Master

4. What the fxck is the last twenty minutes of The Master?

5. Possible Bonus : A Scrooby "Vulnerable Male" Rant


Sadie McKee (1934), 1:24:22

coming soon

Scrooby

The Master class

(1) relaxed introduction : on absorbing a narrative

For example : studying a poem : say, a poem in Latin. Say, the first page of Medea by Seneca. We don't read the words as we are reading these words right now. No, reading the words of poetry involves an active effort.

Let's pause to reflect on what is meant by the active effort of understanding poetry. We cannot just read a poem and easily absorb it, because, all too often, the language of the poem demands a closer look on purpose, simply to understand what is going on in the poem.

Example. In Medea, when the main character says four words in her opening speech ("voce non fausta precor", 12), is this phrase a strongly-stressed climax of her furiously-growing speech, a powerful rounding-out of her rhetorical effusion? Or is this phrase a mere quiet aside, something in the manner of a whisper, an idle comment she is remarking to herself, an interruption of the intimate into the grandiose. Which is it? The distinction is important, because any answer we arrive at relates to how we understand the character of Medea. The answer, however, is not the ultimate goal. Why? The answer is not the ultimate goal because there is no one answer.

The "ultimate goal" in this poetic experience, as in any experience with Art, is related to the active effort : of engaging with, in intrepreting, in thinking about, in trying to make sense of, in determining a way forward through, in marvelling at the complexity at, in integrating with the phenomenon.

When we watch a movie, generally we yield to the willing suspension of disbelief. We assume the lens is a window through which we see human beings in a world not too different from our own. This way of watching a movie is not an active effort.

A film like The Master forces us to apply an active effort in order to understand it.

Compare how The Master tells its story with one of JP's subsequent films, Irrational Man (2015). The difference between how the two films tell their stories, both told by master storytellers, is instructive.

(Fun fact : JP's flask from The Master seems a prominent prop throughout Irrational Man, as if the Freddy from The Master is as a ghost in Irrational Man. Ghosts : Irrational Man is a 1970s movie, a contemporary Taxi Driver (just see the first shot), and this is one reason why it's shot in Panavision widescreen : it's an old-school nod to the 1970s. In that decade Paul Schrader was known to indulge in threatening Russian roulette, for example.)

If we want to even try to understand The Master, we must apply an active effort. This active effort is an ordinary part of Art, not a subsequent activity for some, nor a failing on anybody's part. Art involves the process of "figuring it out", and always has, from the earliest days to now.

The active process of figuring it out is what Art is about.

This "figuring it out" makes a person who is engaging with the Artwork in an effortful way better for the experience, once the experience is over, if it ever ends : for some works of Art remain with us forever. We keep returning to them as if to a prayer, and every time we return, we learn more : Art is evolvement to Revelation. Art is a perpetual motion machine, an engine that never turns off, eternally operating for our benefit, to sharpen us. Thank you, PTA.

How we steer the engine of Art conditions the nature of our minds. The Master is an Artwork that intends to elevate our Thinking, to make us stronger—if we're up to the task. But are we Freddy, or are we the Master?

Scrooby

The Master class (2) : from Magnolia to The Master

a.

A work of art emerges, like anything else, from the unconscious. That is to say, every aspect of the screenplay is touched to some degree by the personality of the artist. A screenplay, so to speak, regardless of its subject matter, is in its nature automatically an autobiography of its author.

First-rate authors know this situation well. So first-rate authors use this knowledge in their working process, in order to raise the game of : (a) artist, (b) the act of creation, (c) the created artwork, and (d) the value this artwork may have on the audience.

A first-rate artist is aware that the artwork is a trace of the artist's unconscious. The work itself, however much may be understood by the artist, will still be full of the artist's secrets, as the unconscious works secretively (i.e., the mystery-speak of dreams). Knowing all this, the artist, in the effort of creation, will work with this knowledge and cooperate with this mysterious situation. The first-rate artist will work with this situation in order to learn something about themselves.

The creation of the first-rate artwork, first and foremost, is an investigation into its artist.

b.

As PTA has grown in years, his thematic material has enrichened and complexified to the point that ordinary audiences may have no idea what the artist is "on about". There may be no ambiguity to the storytelling of Magnolia : the audience knows at all times what is happening, what may be on the characters' minds, and so on. But when we come to The Master, and especially to the second half of the film, the audience has begun to ask the question : What is going on?

This question signals the colossal advancement in the development of the artist PTA : the colossal advancement in storytelling from Magnolia to The Master : the colossal advancement in the mind of PTA.

By The Master, PTA, however determined he is to create a story accessible to the audience, has still created a narrative not easy to understand. He did this on purpose. This is a very important point. If PTA is indeed a first-rate artist, then the difficulty of The Master is not the result of a failure of storytelling, nor is it a bad decision on the part of the storyteller : the difficulty of The Master is intentional.

The difficulty of The Master is intentional because PTA wants us to think.

How many people on the planet Earth truly want you to think? PTA is in the manner of a religious holy man : he is here to inspire you to reach Revelation, to open your eyes to the world and to yourself.

How does PTA intend to do this? By examining himself. The more authentic an examination into his own self in the process of creation, hopefully the more authentic a response the audience will have to the ultimate artwork. That is to say, the artwork will be encoded with so much depth that the audience can think about The Master and never reach the bottom of it. The more PTA dedicates his entire person to the work, ideally the more healing efficacy the work may have on the audience—"ideally", because this "healing" aspect depends on the effort devoted by the audience to exploring The Master.

c.

No matter how much depth PTA encodes into The Master, no matter how much of his unconscious is interwoven with every aspect of the film, the artwork is not going to work on the audience automatically for all that. No. Just watching The Master will leave one scratching one's head by the end. But if the audience puts the effort into exploring the inner mysteries of The Master, lives can be changed for the better.

And this is the power of authentic art. Art changes both Artist and Spectator—

If you let it.

Scrooby

The Master class (3) : two characters : one author

a.

Freddy is an antisocial character. 

The Master is a social character. What does this mean? The Master actively attempts to work with the world (as opposed to Freddy, who often simply rejects rules).

We have just noted two apparent opposites.

Freddy = antisocial
The Master = social

What if we said these two characters are two aspects of one phenomenon? The phenomenon of the mind of PTA.

b.

Freddy is inward. He follows his own code and all else be damned. This personality trait is a fundamental component of his antisocial nature.

The Master is as outward-thinking as he is inward-thinking. Obviously so, or Lancaster Dodd would not have successfully gathered around him an arrangement of votaries, readers, volunteers, and others. Dodd interacts deftly with people just as Freddy often acts unthinkingly of them.

Again we have just described two opposites, and yet :

c.

Freddy and Dodd are two aspects of the one person, writer-director PTA.

The screenwriter is the antisocial element. The writer must step away from the world in order to create. The writer hides away, as it were, to bring their art into existence.

The artist is the antisocial element because the artist deals in Truth and Truth is absolutely blacklisted from public and even private discourse. Generally speaking, because Truth Hurts, the ordinary person of the world wants neither to know the truth of the world, nor the truth of oneself. A dreamworld, however stressful it might be (the comic irony!), is deemed to be more compatible with the Self than the Truth. Thank god your author is on the way out, because he cannot take much more of this farce. But the young have the capacity to learn : if they hear a person worth listening to. But how are they to know who is worth listening to, when Evil assails them from every point from the very first moment of life?

Either a young person sees the light, or doesn't. Call it Destiny.

Art can be the hand that pulls youth up from Death and into Light.

If the young person sees the light, that young person may grow up to be a PTA, and then investigate the process of how the one became the other.

d.

And now this author is sorry to have to say this : virtually no one on earth wants you to succeed, so if you wait for that helping hand, it probably won't be coming. I am sorry to break this news to you, and I hope I'm wrong in your case. Good luck.

e.

We know by now PTA's attitude to the people around him. Just think of the most powerful word in There Will Be Blood : "People." That is PTA speaking.

Consider why Ingmar Bergman gave up filmmaking. Consider why Eugene O'Neill, one of the greatest authors in twentieth-century America, didn't give a fxck for the last ten years of his life. Consider why Ernest Hemingway, another of America's greatest authors, blew his head off. You'd think two American authors who had won a Nobel Prize would be, well, a little satisfied? What do you think these geniuses knew about the world that you don't yet know?

Anyway : If people are a hassle, why is PTA still making films? People are rotten, but some artists have a compulsion to create no matter what, and will endure the greatest mental pains in an attempt to fulfil the call of that compulsion.

If or when the young reader comes to understand the previous paragraph, you will be on the road to becoming a PTA. But beware, for nothing is as you think it is : especially "Success". Just ask Eugene O'Neill. Ask Hemingway.

e.

Note how Freddy begins to morph into Dodd at some points, and how Dodd morphs into Freddy at some points. Note how they both sense a deep connection with the other.

They sense a deep connection with each other because there is a deep connection there : the deepest.

f.

This author could go on and explain further on this point, but for what purpose? Enough has now been said for any reader to arrive at what may be beneficial to think about, someday.

g.

Recapitulation : The two characters Freddy and Dodd are two aspects of the one PTA : the antisocial screenwriter and the social film director.

Scrooby

The Master class (4) : recapitulation


a.

Find it interesting that Freddy's first line is a teaching? "Do you know how . . ."

This is the first link between the two men Freddy and Lancaster Dodd.


b.

And the last link?

The film's final scene recapitulates some of Dodd's words in Freddy's mouth, including the line :

Dodd : "You are the bravest boy I've ever met." (51:26)

Freddy : "You're the bravest girl I've ever known."


c.

Freddy concocts a potion to satisfy the body.
Dodd concocts a teaching to satisfy the mind.


d.

This post strengthens with two facts an earlier remark : "These two characters are two aspects of one phenomenon."



Next : Twelve Teachings of Dodd.


Scrooby

The Master class (5) : twelve teachings of Dodd (I)

TEACHING 1

Man is not an animal.
We are not a part
of the animal kingdom.
We sit far above that crowd,
perched as spirits, not beasts.
You are not ruled by your emotions.
It is not only possible,
it is easily achievable
that we do away
with all negative
emotional impulses,
and bring man back to his
inherent state of perfect.

*

Man is not an animal.

But humankind is an animal, so what does Dodd mean here? We must think about the whole of this teaching in order to understand this first pronouncement. If we jump ahead to this line :

You are not ruled by your emotions.

we may be on to something. So let us start here. By using the negative ("not"), and stressing it, evidently Dodd is remarking on the ordinary fact that people are ruled by their emotions all the time. (In fact, "confidence"—one's "self-confidence"—is based on nothing more than the physical sensation of standing upright : a feeling.)

Dodd here seems to be equating "emotions" with "instinct". (There is absolutely nothing wrong in doing this.) Emotions can come out of the blue as it were (e.g., some weird crying jag, or a feeling of happiness for no discernible reason), just as instinct comes out of the blue as it were (how in the world does a bird know how to build a nest, or read the signs of the stars on their way to whatever intentional direction?).

So, Dodd here is attempting to dislodge from our mind the illusion of control that we think we have all the time (even when we think ourselves "out of control"!).

Dodd is attempting to substitute what may be a greater degree of control than emotion : considered thought.

We are not a part
of the animal kingdom.


Here, Dodd is stressing what we have already offered some commentary on; he is, at first glance, repeating his first line. But he is adding further information to his thesis statement. Here, he emphasizes the word "animal". This suggests that we are a part of some kingdom. In what follows, Dodd does not here offer any explanation of what this kingdom is, but there is encoded in this Teaching enough for us to posit a theory.

We sit far above that crowd,
perched as spirits, not beasts.


(Btw, recall Dodd later : "We stand far above that crowd.", 1:04:19)

There is a grandiosity of this line, "sitting far above" : the heroic primacy of the above over the below. (The winner of an Olympic gold medal stands on the highest part of the platform, for example.) The epic quality of this concept is brought out well in Milton's Paradise Lost (1.19–22) :

Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad'st it pregnant

There is grandiosity, a victory-like triumph, in sitting "far above" and looking down at "that crowd".

So far so crushingly obvious. Simply consider the common phrase : "I look down on you."

We sit far above that crowd,
perched as spirits, not beasts.


"perched" is a brilliant word here, a poetic word, one that in this context fits just as well in, say, Keats and Shakespeare. For example:

Feelest not a kindred pain,
To see such lovely eyes in swimming search
After some warm delight, that seems to perch
Dovelike in the dim cell lying beyond
Their upper lids? ("Endymion", 4.62–66)

The world is grown so bad,
that wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch. (Richard III.1.3.70-71)

"perched" suggests a rising up to that point, another note of victory and triumph, another note of strength. A rising up : just as a bird rises up from the sewage of the earth to the fresh air of freedom, perched up on the branch of the highest tree, looking down on us, the beasts, in our cesspool.

(Consider Dodd criticizing Freddy : at those times, do you think Dodd envisions Freddy perched high above the crowd? No. Dodd even excoriates Freddy in the following manner : "A horrible young man, you are. This is acting like an animal, a dirty animal that eats its own faeces when hungry.", 1:04:10)

So : "We", in this context, may very well suggest all those who follow Dodd's teachings, not just anyone.

You are not ruled by your emotions.

Here, Dodd spells out the message of this first teaching unadorned, directly, clearly.

In this teaching, Dodd does not explain how it is the case that we are not ruled by our emotions. If we are not ruled by our emotions, are we ruled by anything at all inside us? If we are ruled by something inside us, what might it be? Obviously, a good guess in Dodd's case would be this initial statement : "We can be ruled by our minds."

It is not only possible,
it is easily achievable
that we do away
with all negative
emotional impulses,
and bring man back to his
inherent state of perfect.


To begin :

It is not only possible,
it is easily achievable


This phraseology cleverly suggests the aggressive pitter-patter of a salesman at work. That said, the phrase doesn't have to evoke this; the phrase would work fine within a responsible philosophical work. This point is raised here because of an inherent ambiguity of Dodd's character, encoded in him by PTA.

It is not only possible,
it is easily achievable
that we do away
with all negative
emotional impulses,
and bring man back to his
inherent state of perfect.


"we do away"—that is to say, we educate ourselves. We educate ourselves to the point of recreating ourselves so that we gain the power of reaching the perch high above the crowd stuck below in the cesspool of life.

we do away
with all negative
emotional impulses


Dodd has no problem with emotion. A good guess is that he knows the philosopher Heidegger well (ἀλήθεια is a vital Heideggerian word), and Heidegger in his Being and Time instructs us : "In every case Dasein (i.e., the "I") always has some mood." (1.5) In other words, if you're alive, you're in some mood or other : just as you blink and breathe.

But Dodd has a problem with "negative emotional impulses"—just here he doesn't elaborate, but a good guess from the context is that he means anything that stops our upward movement from "animal" to "perfect". In other words, the degrees of error and delusion that keep us from rising.

In short : What stops us from becoming Great? Our servitude to our impulsive emotions and mistaken thinking.

So, to rewrite so far :

it is easy
to do away
with all things
that stop our development . . .

*

and bring man back to his
inherent state of perfect.


(btw : Dodd : " . . . and correcting it back to its inherent state of perfect.", 58:25)

inherent state of perfect : What does Dodd mean here? He means what the poet Shelley meant : every new-born baby has the possibility to become Colossally Great.

"back"—we lose this "inherent state" as soon as we are born, because Tyranny automatically destroys our potential for a lifetime, except for the rare few. And for those rare few, life punishes them mercilessly. Still, at any rate, Dodd has arrived on Earth in order to "save" people from imperfection, and turn the rare few into mighty intelligent masses.

Nice dream. As Freddy dreams . . . in the movie theatre . . . "How are we gonna tie this together, Casper?" (An amusing PTA joke, as in : How the hell are we gonna finish this movie?)

*

Dodd's teaching 1 :

We are much more than what we think we are. If we use our minds to our fullest potential possible, we can pull ourselves out of everything that is not ourselves and become an Individual, and live far, far away from the crowd of life-to-death suckers and failures called the ordinary human population (the beasts who follow impulses). Only through the power of the mind can we save ourselves. Otherwise, you're already lost, you're a slave; and you're already dead : you just haven't received the telegram yet.

But Dodd is here to help. Educate yourself, and you can achieve the Amazing. You can become much more than you ever thought you could be, and achieve much more than you ever thought possible of yourself.

You must educate yourself. Now what does that mean? Find out, or stay lost till the last.

Good luck.

End of Lesson 1

Scrooby

first two shots of The Master

The Sea.



Freddy looking one way, then the other.



Freddy putting on his helmet : beginning his journey. Looking all around him.

What does he see?

Abyss all round.

This is a symbolic opening.

He puts on fighting gear.

The hostile world is everywhere. No choice but to fight, or slowly die.

Not "war", Readers. World.

This is a symbolic opening.

Apropos pic one : "That's a pussy, a lady's pussy." (6:29)