Wednesday, April 21, 2004
I've just finished reading Six Days by Jeremy Bowen (yes, Jeremy Bowen from BBC Breakfast News) which was an interesting and informative guide to the six day war, which gave me an appreciation for why Israel acts as it does. I don't have to like it but now I can begin to understand it.
Now I'm reading Gilliam on Gilliam about the films of Terry Gilliam. I don't particularly rate Brazil that highly, I found it overlong, rambling and unfocused in places, but I was interested in how he effectively said that Sam Lowry's eventual fate of loosing his sanity under torture is almost deserved in the same way you cheer when the bad guy is defeated, because Sam Lowry is a bad guy because he goes along with the state and the evil people in his life. He's complicit in their activities until the point that it conflicts with his own.
There's also a lovely story about meeting George Lucas and chatting, and George Lucas saying that he believed that Darth Vader really is evil.
I argued that he's not evil, he's just the bad guy in the black hat, who you see coming a million miles away. Evil, on the other hand, is Mike Palin in Brazil: your best friend, the nice-guy family man who, for reasons of his career or whatever, will torture and do awful things. You just don't know where evil is coming from.
And I'm certainly as guilty of projection as the next gender-ambiguous blog writer, but this is how I see conservatives see the world, they think that evil is a full time occupation done by people who wear badges that say 'I'm evil. Ask me why and then scream in pain'. Whereas I see it, if anything, as just a job.
Now I'm reading Gilliam on Gilliam about the films of Terry Gilliam. I don't particularly rate Brazil that highly, I found it overlong, rambling and unfocused in places, but I was interested in how he effectively said that Sam Lowry's eventual fate of loosing his sanity under torture is almost deserved in the same way you cheer when the bad guy is defeated, because Sam Lowry is a bad guy because he goes along with the state and the evil people in his life. He's complicit in their activities until the point that it conflicts with his own.
There's also a lovely story about meeting George Lucas and chatting, and George Lucas saying that he believed that Darth Vader really is evil.
I argued that he's not evil, he's just the bad guy in the black hat, who you see coming a million miles away. Evil, on the other hand, is Mike Palin in Brazil: your best friend, the nice-guy family man who, for reasons of his career or whatever, will torture and do awful things. You just don't know where evil is coming from.
And I'm certainly as guilty of projection as the next gender-ambiguous blog writer, but this is how I see conservatives see the world, they think that evil is a full time occupation done by people who wear badges that say 'I'm evil. Ask me why and then scream in pain'. Whereas I see it, if anything, as just a job.
