Quotes

[Faust]

/\ With all due respect, I kindly disagree with your assessment. One is tragicomedy, the other is drama.

[todestrieb]

"We have to learn to think differently -- in order at last, perhaps very late on, to attain even more: to feel differently." -Nietzsche

[interest1]

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[Fade to Black]

Heh, on the same thread of the rest of this page thus far...

"Who is the greater fool, he who speaks without thinking, or he who cannot help but feel everything he hears?" - myself.

[todestrieb]

Tanizaki

"If light is scarce then light is scarce; we will immerse ourselves in the darkness and there discover its own particular beauty."

"Find beauty not only in the thing itself but in the pattern of the shadows, the light and dark which that thing provides"

"We delight in the mere sight of the delicate glow of fading rays clinging to the surface of a dusky wall, there to live out what little life remains to them."

[Fuuma]

"The Fugitive thus provides a clear version of the violent passage à l'acte serving as a lure, a vehicle of ideological displacement. A step further from this zero-level of violence is found in Paul Schrader's and Martin Scorcese's Taxi Driver, in the final outburst of Travis (Robert de Niro) against the pimps who control the young girl he wants to save (Jodie Foster). Crucial is the implicit suicidal dimension of this passage à l'acte: when Travis prepares for his attack, he practices in front of the mirror the drawing of the gun; in what is the best-known scene of the film, he addresses his own image in the mirror with the aggressive-condescending "You talkin' to me?". In a textbook illustration of Lacan's notion of the "mirror stage," aggressivity is here clearly aimed at oneself, at one's own mirror image. This suicidal dimension reemerges at the end of the slaughter scene when Travis, heavily wounded and leaning at the wall, mimics with the forefinger of his right hand a gun aimed at his blood-stained forehead and mockingly triggers it, as if saying "The true aim of my outburst was myself." The paradox of Travis is that he perceives HIMSELF as part of the degenerate dirt of the city life he wants to eradicate, so that, as Brecht put it apropos of revolutionary violence in his The Measure Taken, he wants to be the last piece of dirt with whose removal the room will be clean.

Far from signaling an imperial arrogance, such "irrational" outbursts of violence - one of the key topics of American culture and ideology - rather stand for an implicit admission of impotence: their very violence, display of destructive power, is to be conceived as the mode of appearance of its very opposite - if anything, they are exemplary cases of the impotent passage à l'acte. As such, these outbursts enable us to discern the hidden obverse of the much-praised American individualism and self-reliance: the secret awareness that we are all helplessly thrown around by forces out of our control. There is a wonderful early short story by Patricia Highsmith, "Button," about a middle-class New Yorker who lives with a mongoloid 9-years old son who babbles meaningless sounds all the time and smiles, while saliva is running out of his open mouth; one late evening, unable to endure the situation, he decides to take a walk on the lone Manhattan streets where he stumbles upon a destitute homeless beggar who pleadingly extends his hand towards him; in an act of inexplicable fury, the hero beats the beggar to death and tears off from his jacket a button. Afterwards, he returns home a changed man, enduring his family nightmare without any traumas, capable of even a kind smile towards his mongoloid son; he keeps this button all the time in the pocket of his trousers - a remainder that, once at least, he did strike back against his miserable destiny."-Zizek

I've rarely seen someone express so clearly the place of "passage à l'acte" (acting out) in American films and by extension society. + I had reached exactly the same conclusion before reading this and Zizek usually have a very different effect on me (he challenges my established truths) so its a nice change of pace.

[SHYE_POSER]

Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.

[Faust]

Interesting, Fuuma, except his conclusion about "Button" is rather puzzling. It sounds like the guy lashes out at his fortune by demeaning himself by descending into the most despicable form of violence - not exactly striking back at his fortune. Probably just poor choice of words.

[endorphinz]

"You can't put your arms around a memory"

--Johnny Thunders

[Fuuma]

Interesting, Fuuma, except his conclusion about "Button" is rather puzzling. It sounds like the guy lashes out at his fortune by demeaning himself by descending into the most despicable form of violence - not exactly striking back at his fortune. Probably just poor choice of words.

Look for the full text its about violence in France and terrorism. Zizek always brings a challenging viewpoint to the table.

[cmitso412]

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
-"Anna Karenina"
Leo Tolstoy

[cmitso412]

"Generally speaking, the best people nowadays go into journalism, the second best into business, the rubbish into politics and the shits into law."
-Auberon Waugh

[Faust]

/\ Well, shit, that makes me feel good, then.

[cmitso412]

ahah don't mean any offense by it, just thought it was an interesting quote

[Faust]

I wasn't being sarcastic.