|
SuperMechagodzilla posted:Lomax: What did you eat? So is the inversion of Parsifal's chastity with Lena's adultery thematically significant in any interesting way, or is that about as far as it goes? (I haven't seen this myself). Per Wikipedia, Wagner makes compassion at Parsifal's moral center. I can imagine some really dire readings of the effects of the Shimmer on that basis. ( I'm not entirely sure the New Age movement can appropriate Wagner, per se. I mean, what do Hitler, Tolkien, Jung, and Joseph Campbell have in common?)
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2018 18:05
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 6, 2024 04:05 |
|
|
Hodgepodge posted:So is the inversion of Parsifal's chastity with Lena's adultery thematically significant in any interesting way, or is that about as far as it goes? (I haven't seen this myself). Lena's adultery is presented as analogous to Parsifal's sin of killing the holy swan - the arrow piercing its side is of course linked to Amfortas's unhealing wound. Parsifal is drawn into the quest to cure Amfortas when he begins to acknowledge (confess knowledge of) his "great guilt". It’s gradually revealed that Parcifal’s guilt over the swan is linked to the deaths of his parents back in ‘the real world’: his father, Gamuret, was a Knight killed in battle and his pacifist mother died of grief when she saw Parsifal begin to follow in his footsteps. Parsifal’s compassion for Amfortas allows him to overcome his mother’s paralyzing influence and defeat Klingsor. So there is a pretty obvious link between Amfortas and Garumet, which Annihilation literalizes with the reveal that Kane was actually The Cameraman (as that character is referred to in the script) all along. Annihilation is not a 1:1 adaptation of Parsifal, mind. The film probably ‘should’ begin with the characters emerging from their tents. quote:( I'm not entirely sure the New Age movement can appropriate Wagner, per se. I mean, what do Hitler, Tolkien, Jung, and Joseph Campbell have in common?) Assuming that’s not a rhetorical question, the answer is: organicism. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 12:13 on Mar 31, 2018 |
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2018 22:01
|
|
|
SuperMechagodzilla posted:Lena's adultery is presented as analogous to Parsifal's sin of killing of the holy swan - the arrow piercing its side is of course linked to Amfortas's unhealing wound. Parsifal is drawn into the quest to cure Amfortas when he begins to acknowledge (confess knowledge of) his "great guilt". That does make sense. It would be a mess as a straight adaptation. Like, it would seem really clumsy to replace the father/king metaphor with... husband/clone-husband. You seem the be arguing that the result is clumsy anyhow, but on it's own terms. I'm not sure I could read replacing chastity with infidelity as anything but deliberate. Unless the film were working with the commonly penetrative nature of these sins against a patriarchal symbolic order? quote:Assuming that’s not a rhetorical question, the answer is: organicism. My answer was "being huge Wagner fanboys," but your answer may be more to the point.
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2018 23:55
|
|
|
Hodgepodge posted:That does make sense. It would be a mess as a straight adaptation. Like, it would seem really clumsy to replace the father/king metaphor with... husband/clone-husband. In Parsifal, the hero returns to find Amfortas reduced to a madman, destroying the community while begging for death. More than just illustrating the passage of time, this dramatic change illustrates a shift in Parsifal’s subjective stance towards his ostensible leader. This is where it’s necessary to brutally simplify the film; Annihilation is fundamentally about a woman who investigates what happened to her soldier husband “overseas”, and discovers that he did a war crime. So where Parsifal discovers that Amfortas is figuratively not the man he thought he was, it’s almost literal here. The uncanny thing about “Kane’s” suicide video is that it plays like an execution, with the offscreen cameraman’s dialogue put in the mouth of the victim. (And even though the victim is played by Oscar Isaac, he’s dimly lit, far from the camera, presented to Lena on a tiny LCD screen.... It implies a case of mistaken identity, given Lena’s mental state). The ultimate point of the video is really that Kane snapped and killed a prisoner with a white phosphorus grenade. quote:I'm not sure I could read replacing chastity with infidelity as anything but deliberate. Unless the film were working with the commonly penetrative nature of these sins against a patriarchal symbolic order? I think people overemphasize Parsifal’s ‘chastity’ just because he doesn’t want to gently caress the sorceress Kundry. Parsifal’s purity is explicitly due to his ignorance. Of course ‘knowledge’ includes the biblical sense of the word, but Parsifal is also crucially ignorant of the customs and rituals of the dysfunctional, crumbling Grail community.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2018 06:08
|
|
|
imagine thinking that every piece of media you'd ever consumed contained references to every other piece of media you'd ever consumed contemplate that in light of all the media you've never consumed, the unread books sitting on your shelf and the unwatched movies you haven't gotten around to, the unlistened podcasts and the misremembered lyrics intertextual analysis in the absence of direct reference or authorial explanation is basically schizophrenia, seeing signs in everything it's all interlinked [interlinked]
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 02:49
|
|
|
That's pareidolia, not schizophrenia.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 02:59
|
|
|
crawlkill posted:intertextual analysis in the absence of direct reference or authorial explanation is basically schizophrenia, seeing signs in everything Well, no. Intertextual analysis is not dependent upon the apprehension of a 'reference,' by which you mean the intentional quoting of one text in another. Intertextual analysis implicitly recognizes that all unique texts function as reference to other texts dealing in similar subjects and themes. You're getting hung up on the anxiety of "all the media you've never consumed," as if you would need to, say, see every noir film in existence and read the entire body of pulp detective literature in order to understand any individual work in its generic context. That's not how genre works.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 03:15
|
|
|
K. Waste posted:Well, no. Intertextual analysis is not dependent upon the apprehension of a 'reference,' by which you mean the intentional quoting of one text in another. Intertextual analysis implicitly recognizes that all unique texts function as reference to other texts dealing in similar subjects and themes. THIS IS CRAZY POSTMODERNISM I WONT HAVE IT
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 03:20
|
|
|
"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. When soldiers take their oath they are given a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of the Autarch. Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the special duties and burdens of military life—they are soldiers from that moment, though they may know nothing of the management of arms. I did not know that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic. The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves or not at all."
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 03:29
|
|
|
Unormal posted:"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. When soldiers take their oath they are given a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of the Autarch. Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the special duties and burdens of military life—they are soldiers from that moment, though they may know nothing of the management of arms. I did not know that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic. The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves or not at all." Even though it's pretty much already in Vandermeer's book, the bear scene in the movie felt very reminiscent of the Alzabo in the Book of the New Sun in its ability to use human speech and thought to hunt for prey. Overall I thought this movie was just all right but I did love a lot of the production design--the human pool, mutant beasts, and lighthouse/bunghole were all pretty rad. I even liked the crystal beach trees. A little better than Arrival, (way) worse than Under the Skin. I'm also not sure what to make of both this and Under the Skin conceptualizing extraterrestrials as black skinned mannequins. What does that say about the cultural moment contra the Greys of the 80s and 90s? porfiria fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Apr 2, 2018 |
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 04:05
|
|
|
HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:That's pareidolia, not schizophrenia. Apophenia
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 04:08
|
|
|
porfiria posted:Even though it's pretty much already in Vandermeer's book, the bear scene in the movie felt very reminiscent of the Alzabo in the Book of the New Sun in its ability to use human speech and thought to hunt for prey. Agreed but the alzabo was legitimately sentient, unless I'm misremembering. It could've gotten a lot weirder with everything, the movie kept edging towards going off the rails (in a good way) but never really does. The Stalker comparisons are tenuous at best. Very heavy handed and cheesy in points. I will say that the dull Shimmer effect strongly reminded me of tripping on shrooms in the woods, really nailed the scuzzy psychedelic vibe so that's something. Not a bad movie by any stretch but could've been much better. Definitely interested in checking out the books now.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 05:00
|
|
|
Yeah, I leaned over and very furiously said "omg they totally ripped off the alzabo" to my wife during that scene.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 06:02
|
|
|
Capntastic posted:Apophenia "Referential mania." talktapes posted:Agreed but the alzabo was legitimately sentient, unless I'm misremembering. I think it's sort of ambiguous as to whether it might be a Chinese Room or something but I also may be misremembering. Severian definitely talks to it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 08:32
|
|
|
Capntastic posted:Apophenia qabala
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 11:18
|
|
|
porfiria posted:Even though it's pretty much already in Vandermeer's book, the bear scene in the movie felt very reminiscent of the Alzabo in the Book of the New Sun in its ability to use human speech and thought to hunt for prey. A relative loss of confidence in futurity and growth, I guess. Greys were basically technologically advanced humans who had lost emotion or culture and implied that humans might one day have space ships and not lose their humanity. Extraterrestrial life is no longer comprehensible, as compared to the greys who always enacted some kind of plan that humans could figure out and respond to. Greys seem to have left the culture entirely. Are there even people still claiming abduction by them? John Mack and Bud Hopkins are dead, and no new hypnotist ufo “experts” seem to have risen. Bob Lazar gave up his Area 51 scam long ago and runs a mail-order chemical business in Nevada.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 11:20
|
|
|
Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:qabala Qdoba
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 11:33
|
|
|
crawlkill posted:intertextual analysis in the absence of direct reference or authorial explanation is basically schizophrenia, seeing signs in everything Here’s the problem: I made the reference to Parsifal. I drew the connection, recontextualizing the film And even though I presented both ‘direct references and authorial explanations’, you still managed to get yourself extremely confused. There is obviously something wrong with your ability to read. The issue is that you believe that reading is the practice of uncovering messages hidden inside the text, and so you are paralyzed with uncertainty if not given answers in the back of the book. How can you know if you did it correctly? You have no idea what you are supposed to do, and the abyss of freedom is terrifying - the messages could be hidden anywhere, which means they are, in effect, hidden everywhere. I do not experience this fear, because there are no hidden messages. I simply write truthfully and accurately. So I made a reference to Parsifal. And it’s an extremely solid reference, if I do say so myself. It just happens that Annihilation and Parsifal both end with the disintegration of the evil kingdom of illusions. The evil kingdom used demonic flowers in the form of women to entice and infect the knights from the neighbouring kingdom, turning them against their countrymen. Also the king of the knights is the only one to return from this land, but he’s badly wounded and rendered impotent. A random person with memory problems stumbles into the conflict and, feeling strangely responsible, sets out to find a cure. The king’s cure turns out to be the same weapon that wounded him. Being a general, Kane would be the highest ranking member of his squad. He is healed with the same white phosphorous grenade that killed him. Also there’s a bit in the script where the Kane who returns home is explicitly unable to have sex. These ‘Wagnerian’ elements are all things Garland created for his version of the story, so it’s extremely unlikely to be coincidence. At the same time, though, his intentions aren’t very important.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 14:34
|
|
|
SuperMechagodzilla posted:Here’s the problem: I made the reference to Parsifal. I drew the connection, recontextualizing the film And even though I presented both ‘direct references and authorial explanations’, you still managed to get yourself extremely confused. honey honey I meant direct reference in the text not in your apophenic/schizophrenic response to the text, which you also have not read K. Waste posted:Well, no. Intertextual analysis is not dependent upon the apprehension of a 'reference,' by which you mean the intentional quoting of one text in another. Intertextual analysis implicitly recognizes that all unique texts function as reference to other texts dealing in similar subjects and themes. this is a perfectly valid point but I was making fun of a specific person who was not talking about something halfway codified like genre but instead who thinks random-rear end reference is more important to understanding a bad adaptation of a weird book than for example the book itself if smg were comparing it to other obscurantist cosmic horror I would be more sympathetic but they seem to be in a bliss world of nonsense and from their rapsheet I wouldn’t expect better, I can’t even tell if they’re sincere, I only barely am crawlkill fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Apr 2, 2018 |
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 15:07
|
|
|
Capntastic posted:Apophenia I Before E posted:Qdoba This as well.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 15:10
|
|
|
does anyone else get a read off smg like they’re gonna be the first 45 year old to do a school shooting and is there anyone we can report them to before that happens
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 15:23
|
|
|
crawlkill posted:honey honey I meant direct reference in the text Right: your objection is that nobody in the film says “this is just like Of course, we can take your logic to its natural & sane conclusion and say there is no reference to anything in this movie; it’s just a blur of colours. Did the director ever explain that the lighthouse is a reference to the now-antiquated practice of using big lights to warn ships away from rocky and/or shallow coastlines? How can we know with certainty that Alex Garland knows what a lighthouse is? And if Garland doesn’t know that the lighthouse is a lighthouse, can we call the lighthouse a lighthouse? Without clear intention, nothing is certain. We have no clue what it is supposed to be. ‘We all know the old, worn-out joke about a madman who thought he was a grain of corn; after being finally cured and sent home, he immediately returned to the mental institution, explaining to the doctor his panic: "On the road, I encountered a hen, and I was afraid it would eat me!" To the doctor's surprised exclamation, "But what's the problem now? You know you're not a grain but a man who cannot be swallowed by a hen!", the madman answered "Yes, I know I am no longer a grain, but does the hen know it?"...’ -Zizek This is your dilemma, as you shrink and turn into a corn cob: you know that the lighthouse-shaped object in the screen is a lighthouse, but does Alex Garland know it? SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Apr 2, 2018 |
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 15:37
|
|
|
crawlkill posted:this is a perfectly valid point but I was making fun of a specific person who was not talking about something fairly codified like genre but instead who thinks random-rear end reference is more important to understanding a bad adaptation of a weird book than for example the book itself You are the only person who is preoccupied with this pretense of a reading being "more important to understanding." All SMG is doing is posting about a film. His use of Parsifal and new age esoteric literature as a point of reference does not require the 'direct reference' that you yourself do not need to, say, compare the movie to Die, Monster, Die. You get nowhere becoming obsessed with gauging 'sincerity,' the 'hidden meaning' of the post - you are already unilaterally rejecting SMG's use of a work from a different medium and genre as a point of thematic and narrative reference despite his clearly and straightforwardly articulating the parallels between them. The problem here is not sincerity, but bad faith. SMG has already written extensively about how the film is obscurantist, he has already written about it in terms of comparing it unfavorably to other similar films in the same genre. You've written five posts in this thread, and three of them are preoccupied exclusively with dismissing SMG, without actually responding to specific claims. Instead of wishing for someone to perform a reading with the "more important" reference of the book, you should sincerely and in good faith do it yourself. If you have so little to write about the book or the film, then you do yourself no favors by attacking people for the temerity of actually posting, especially when the basis of your attack is "Their analytical frame of reference isn't what I would have chosen." crawlkill posted:does anyone else get a read off smg like they’re gonna be the first 45 year old to do a school shooting and is there anyone we can report them to before that happens Now you're just being an rear end in a top hat.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 15:38
|
|
|
INT. DANK TORTURE BASEMENT – NIGHT The sound of metal chains whipping against bare flesh hang heavy in the air, like a bird flying into a headwind. The room is damp and sparsely lit. SUPERMECHAGODZILLA’s scarred jowls are illuminated by a desk lamp laying sideways on the floor SUPERMECHAGODZILA Which reading is true? Which reading is true? WHICH READING IS TRUE!? KOOS [Spits mouthful of blood] The words are used specifically for their literal intention, the events are straightforward so as to be easily understood by an audience of children. The beating begins again, with a furious vigour, until SUPERMECHAGODZILLA can barely stand. He rests one hand against a dirty wall, sweat marring his 1993 Nebraska Film Festival hypercolor t-shirt. SUPERMECHAGODZILA The opposite reading is true… The opposite reading is true. I’ve been to college. KOOS straightens his posture, his pride and dignity unscathed by the days long assault of a fat, stupid man. KOOS Any perceived allusions to facism in A Goofy Movie are a wholesale invention of a misguided viewer. SUPERMECHAGODZILLA adopts the look of a man who has been defeated. Wearily, he grabs a shotgun that had been resting in the corner, and cocks it loudly. KOOS Goofy simply wishes to bond with his son through fishing, a traditional pastime, as he had done with his own father. It is neither parable nor allegory. Neither dog was molested, the material does not support this.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 15:46
|
|
|
K. Waste posted:Now you're just being an rear end in a top hat. now you’re cooking with authorial intent
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 15:47
|
|
|
The film poses a question to the viewer about the directional nature of change and if we are more ourselves in the past, having acknowledged flaws (personal ethical failings, dissatisfaction with our environment and relationships) or in the future after more potentially damaging flaws and losses have ripped into us. This hearkens back to similar themes of how we as individuals see our ideal lives, as presented by the Old Spice product line. Are we more ourselves when our bodies sweat (biological function rooting ourselves in an inherently entropic path of degradation) or are we more human when we alter ourselves with not just with offerings from a solidly designed product at a reasonable price point? Are we not masking our mortality with ideas of pointedly fase odors replacing the death drive of perspiration? The light hearted and humorous nature of the advertisements lend credence to the suggestion that it is the change itself we seek rather than any material gain the change will bring. A sort of lassoing of control out of our rapidly disintegrating bodies and society, to assert our pine freshness despite the dampness we feel.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 16:13
|
|
|
incidentally the biggest single stylistic choice in the adaptation was to give the characters names, in the novel they’re just called by their titles so to cite a character explicitly not giving a name in a different work as a reference point is p gloriously dumb, in a way it’s hard to see if you haven’t read the books in the same way that the movie seems more like it’s making intentional reference to Die Monster Die in light of specific changes in the plot that make it more Color Out of Space-y than the novel already was, these are reference points only familiarity with the original text will make plain it does not seem like a radical sentiment to say that if you want to understand a film you could do worse than starting with the book it is an adaptation of crawlkill fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Apr 2, 2018 |
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 16:51
|
|
|
crawlkill posted:incidentally the biggest single stylistic choice in the adaptation was to give the characters names To tie this back into Old Spice we find that Wieden&Kennedy eschew this form of crude metatextual deixis in the “Man your Man Could Smell Like” advertisement by having the protagonist be an ever shifting amalgam of concepts and ideals- suggestions of things the viewer might want not for themselves, but for their partner. This view of what we desire being an infinite regress of what we see our personified desire striving to be, on its own terms, is exemplified in Annihilation by The Biologist having her partner returned to her as an empty vessel. Her own desires, not for herself per se, but for what she imagines herself as wanting her partner to embody, have been stripped of meaning. It is only through Area X that this sort of ignition process, the revivification of desire, can be brought back and used to refill her empty husband. It is noteworthy that this deoderant advertisement highlight Isaiah Mustafa in a similar role as Terry Crews, and yet altogether something else. We see ourselves imagining new realities embodied by this new man in an old context, and yet we still wonder how Terry Crews could inhabit this role. This is parallel to the few scattered scenes we see of The Biologist’s affair. Our desires, even a step removed, may be fungible but those who possess those desires are not. It is our perspective that gives these desires context.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 17:11
|
|
|
It is entirely possible that a comparison to specific commercials could be interesting and revealing if you were able to keep it up for more than two words. edit: Actually, reviewed the post in question, and it was only one word. My bad. Sir Kodiak fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Apr 2, 2018 |
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 17:29
|
|
|
It should be very easy to prove me wrong. Syberberg’s Parsifal is up on youtube. Of course, my posts are just groundwork for an elaboration on the differences between Annihilation and Parsifal, how Annihilation falls short of Parsifal. Zizek’s written extensively about Wagner and how Parsifal is constantly appropriated and re-appropriated by different ideologies. There are New Age adaptations, Fascist adaptations, environmentalist adaptations, etc. And Zizek himself reads the opera in two ways: as the tale of two rival gangs, and as a variation on The Matrix and They Live (where the ‘kingdom of illusions’ is the symbolic network that constitutes reality itself). These repetitions occur because the opera is dealing in basic terms of purity and corruption, and each restaging is ultimately a struggle and a failure to explain ‘why things go wrong’. Zizek’s implicit point, with his dual reading, is that the Matrix-style paranoid questioning of reality reduces the story to a mere petty squabble. Yet there is a truth to the opera that keeps people coming back to it. What we need is ideological critique. What Garland misses, like many have missed, is that Klingsor is a former grail knight - and that the opera ends with the deposition of Amfortas. In other words, there is no corruption from outside. The conflict is a result of a systemic injustice, and so the only proper ending is an Elysium-style revolution pushing for dictatorship of the proletariat. Parsifal pushes Amfortas aside and commands that the grail be uncovered forever - i.e. that it become accessible to all. The final line “redeem the redeemer” clearly means that we must redeem these past failed attempts at redemption. The redemption in Garland’s film is merely a sort of rudimentary anti-war sentiment - basically that war is hell, war makes our troops do bad things. (It’s like an ersatz version of the Apocalypse Now pastiche in Kong: Skull Island (another of the half-dozen recent films about secret worlds cloaked inside magic bubbles).) Lena simultaneously forgives her husband for his war crimes and for metaphorically being ‘the man who killed her husband’. The film nonetheless ends with the restoration of normality - the fire that consumes the alien castle is of course the same fire from which it emerged in the title sequence. The corruption of war is simply pushed back where it belongs, to the places where people speak “Portuguese, Swahili or Pashto”. There’s no question of the social and economic origins of war, and the focus is exclusively on how hard it is on our troops when they’re made to do terrible things (see Waltz With Bashir, Zero Dark Thirty, and films of that sort). “This is ideology at its purest: The re-focus on the perpetrator’s traumatic experience enables us to obliterate the entire ethico-political background of the conflict ... Such a ‘humanization’ thus serves to obfuscate the key point: the need for a ruthless analysis of what we are doing in our political-military activity and what is at stake. Our political-military struggles are not an opaque history that brutally disrupts our intimate personal lives–they are something in which we fully participate.” -Zizek “To be angry is to be human.” -Natalie Portman, after her boyfriend commits a massacre in Star Wars 2 So the closest thing we have to a redemption of Garland’s film is in noting the rather bleak fact that Lena will obviously never be allowed to leave Area X. The restoration of normalcy is predicated on her indefinite confinement in a government black site.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 18:06
|
|
|
SuperMechagodzilla posted:So the closest thing we have to a redemption of Garland’s film is in noting the rather bleak fact that Lena will obviously never be allowed to leave Area X. The restoration of normalcy is predicated on her indefinite confinement in a government black site. the single defining feature of the facility of the Southern Reach is that it is not inside Area X also I need to be clear I did not read your boring-rear end post, I started at the bottom and let my eyes slide along it until I found a laughably incorrect assertion I could easily contradict, you are not extracting emotional labor from me here
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 18:35
|
|
|
crawlkill posted:the single defining feature of the facility of the Southern Reach is that it is not inside Area X Area X is not so much a spatial area as it is a threat of undiluted context that removes the barriers of everything that comes into contact with it. With this in mind it can be handily stated that Lena is not able to leave Area X as it has already worked its changes upon her (more specifically, allowed everything else within Area X to work its changes) Area X is Lena’s changed husband returning to her, and Area X is Southern Reach’s nervous observation of the shimmer. Area X’s border is not just the shimmer but our perception of it and, further, anything changed by the shimmer’s processes can be said to be an emanation of Area X. When Lena and Kane reunite after their forays into the cleansing and healing onslaught of context that changes lives, the threat of Area X is what those two, potentially undying beings do as they go about their lives or procreate.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 18:52
|
|
|
crawlkill posted:the single defining feature of the facility of the Southern Reach is that it is not inside Area X Lena enters Area X the moment she is tranquilized, as signaled by a title card. The name of Area X is evocative of the myths surrounding Area 51. It is the name of the government facility. The Shimmer has its own distinct title card, as does The Lighthouse. Each new location is a zone inside the previous one. The Lighthouse is inside The Shimmer, and the Shimmer is inside Area X. (And Area X is in Florida, and so-on.) These title cards also give the film a distinct 3-act structure.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 18:57
|
|
|
SuperMechagodzilla posted:Lena enters Area X the moment she is tranquilized, as signaled by a title card. The name of Area X is evocative of the myths surrounding Area 51. It is the name of the government facility. while this is not true it is at least your first fairly-argued point, I assume, I don't remember when the title cards flashed if it is as you said it is misleading but I can understand how an illiterate philistine would read it that way Area X = the Shimmer, the facility is the Southern Reach headquarters, read the loving books god what kind of a person compares one text to another without exposing themselves to the text the first text is based on you should stick to this shorter post format, you are at least capable of expressing ideas in it, even if they are dumb and bad
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 19:09
|
|
|
read the loving books, he said in the movie thread
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 19:19
|
|
|
BravestOfTheLamps posted:read the loving books, he said in the movie thread me, a fool: you will understand the failings of this movie better if you look at the choices it made in keeping and divergence with the novel it was based on you, a wise man: because someone answered "I don't know" to several questions, I have derived in detail the director's sexual history
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 19:25
|
|
|
crawlkill posted:me, a fool: you will understand the failings of this movie better if you look at the choices it made in keeping and divergence with the novel it was based on Is the prose any good?
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 19:30
|
|
|
SuperMechagodzilla posted:The Shimmer has its own distinct title card, as does The Lighthouse. Each new location is a zone inside the previous one. The Lighthouse is inside The Shimmer, and the Shimmer is inside Area X. (And Area X is in Florida, and so-on.) While that picture of nested concentricity is structurally pleasing I do not agree that what Area X represents can be reduced to such a simple diagram. Area X demands that we ask what any given object means when the barriers of context are magnified or stripped away completely. Even a trait as concrete seeming as “strength” becomes ashes when contextualized and re-examined: is a pencil stronger than a rubber band? Surely the pencil is more rigid and yet when bent by the same forces the pencil snaps and the band regains its shape. What is Lena? Is she her body, or her memory, or her motives? When the same forces are applied to her as everything else in Area X does she snap or, through some meditative elasticity of resolve, reform like the rubber band? Does she carry Area X within her, as made apparent by the 90s monster movie eye glow effect? Is the ultimate joke of Annihilation that something as anathema to human comprehension as The Shimmer has become bottled and stored within a human? “For the rest of the earth’s organisms, existence is relatively uncomplicated. Their lives are about three things: survival, reproduction, death—and nothing else. This is the tragedy: Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are—hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones.” -Ligotti Area X is not something that can be diagrammed like a pencil being snapped or a location on a map. It is not an alien motive or alien object- it is an alien context that is ultimately packaged into human form. And that is the only way we can make sense of it, by puzzling out what moves that Human-X might be prompted to undertake
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 19:32
|
|
|
crawlkill posted:while this is not true it is at least your first fairly-argued point, I assume, I don't remember when the title cards flashed Mind you, the second book is all about how the distinction between Area X and the Southern Reach facility is not as meaningful as people think, so that ambiguity isn’t exactly off-message.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 19:37
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 6, 2024 04:05 |
|
|
crawlkill posted:while this is not true it is at least your first fairly-argued point, I assume, I don't remember when the title cards flashed It is not necessary to read the book to understand the film. The film is not that bad. It actually seems to have confused you, because you are now conflating the two - treating the film as a supplementary document, deficient illustration of, the the ‘true’ story in the book. This has led you to not read the film properly. When the film says “Area X”, and then cuts to Lena in her jail cell, that means the jail cell is in Area X. In the film. If the jail cell is not meant to be in Area X, then Garland is grossly incompetent. But Garland simply presents a conventional edit, then subverts this convention later - when he cuts to Lena having sex after the Shimmer title card, before revealing that the sex scene was a dream sequence. He also cuts from the Lighthouse title card to another flashback, to Lena wandering through the Shimmer absolutely lost and distraught, before making a final, jarring, jump-cut to Lena calmly standing on a beach. This jump-cut implies some kind of sudden psychological break. Lena has lost it. The “Area X” title card, and therefore the name of the facility, was deliberately changed from the script, where the title card reads PART ONE - THE SOUTHERN REACH. The specific building is still referred to as Southern Reach in dialogue, but it’s clear that Area X refers to everything inside (and including) the massive border wall. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Apr 2, 2018 |
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 19:45
|
|