From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #102 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Sunday, May 7 2000 Volume 02 : Number 102 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Iron Giant (was b/Christian virtues) ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: Iron Giant (was b/Christian virtues) ["David S. Bratman" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 6 May 2000 11:20:46 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: Iron Giant (was b/Christian virtues) On Fri, 5 May 2000, Susan Kroupa wrote: > "Guns bad. Guns kill." That message, which was repeated too much for my > taste in Iron Giant. And I'm not pro-guns or anything--I just wish the > message hadn't interfered with The Boy and His Robot, which did have charm. Maybe it's that I think the badness of guns is so obvious that it doesn't qualify as a message, but I thought that point was handled with some subtlety and charm. Partly it's in the way the Giant doesn't realize he's dangerous until after he loses his temper. And while the ending was mildly stupid, it wasn't anywhere near as bad as most such films. That was partly because the film didn't lose tone, which is what usually happens, and partly because the viewer, or at least this viewer, had built up enough emotional investment in the Boy and His Robot theme that their parting was genuinely touching. Toy Story 1 (I haven't seen #2) was more impressive for its animation and some great voice acting than for its theme or script. Apart from the Buzz-thinks-he's-real shtick, I can't remember anything that happened. I am, by the way, still emerging from numbed shock. Berni and I gave in and watched Phantom Menace on video last night. I know it was a bomb. I know everybody said it was bad (except Susan Shwartz who loved it, but what I think of Susan's novels I'd best not say). But nobody had even intimated that it was THIS bad. My god, I was crawling the walls. Thank goodness I slept through most of the pod race. What really set Iron Giant apart from both of the above is that it didn't set out to dazzle. It was even QUIET, something virtually no films are now. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 May 2000 10:13:57 -0700 From: "Susan Kroupa" Subject: Re: Iron Giant (was b/Christian virtues) GALAXY QUEST (which we watched again last night) is everything PHANTOM MENACE should have been and more. Of course, it had a great script AND a plot and didn't rely soley on it's wowzer special effects. We'll have to agree to disagree on IG. I went into the film really _wanting_ to love it, but came out disappointed. Sue - ----- Original Message ----- From: David S. Bratman To: Sent: Saturday, May 06, 2000 8:20 AM Subject: Re: Iron Giant (was b/Christian virtues) > On Fri, 5 May 2000, Susan Kroupa wrote: > > > "Guns bad. Guns kill." That message, which was repeated too much for my > > taste in Iron Giant. And I'm not pro-guns or anything--I just wish the > > message hadn't interfered with The Boy and His Robot, which did have charm. > > Maybe it's that I think the badness of guns is so obvious that it doesn't > qualify as a message, but I thought that point was handled with some > subtlety and charm. Partly it's in the way the Giant doesn't realize > he's dangerous until after he loses his temper. And while the ending was > mildly stupid, it wasn't anywhere near as bad as most such films. That > was partly because the film didn't lose tone, which is what usually > happens, and partly because the viewer, or at least this viewer, had > built up enough emotional investment in the Boy and His Robot theme that > their parting was genuinely touching. > > Toy Story 1 (I haven't seen #2) was more impressive for its animation and > some great voice acting than for its theme or script. Apart from the > Buzz-thinks-he's-real shtick, I can't remember anything that happened. > > I am, by the way, still emerging from numbed shock. Berni and I gave in > and watched Phantom Menace on video last night. I know it was a bomb. I > know everybody said it was bad (except Susan Shwartz who loved it, but > what I think of Susan's novels I'd best not say). But nobody had even > intimated that it was THIS bad. My god, I was crawling the walls. Thank > goodness I slept through most of the pod race. > > What really set Iron Giant apart from both of the above is that it didn't > set out to dazzle. It was even QUIET, something virtually no films are now. > ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 May 2000 13:52:07 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: Iron Giant (was b/Christian virtues) In a message dated 5/6/00 8:17:50 AM Pacific Daylight Time, dbratman@genie.idt.net writes: << > "Guns bad. Guns kill." That message, which was repeated too much for my > taste in Iron Giant. And I'm not pro-guns or anything--I just wish the > message hadn't interfered with The Boy and His Robot, which did have charm. >> {SPOILER WARNING FOR IRON GIANT} I had a very different take on it. I didn't see the "guns bad" emphasis as an extraneous message the movie was trying to push. It was central to the story of the robot's identity crisis. The robot's discovery that it was, itself, a weapon, and its consequent identity crisis, was one of the few things that distinguished the plot of this movie from that of ET. Not to mention the fact that the =audience's= discovery, halfway through the movie, that the lovable robot had a sinister side helps to save the movie from excess sweetness. How the innocent, simple-"hearted" robot reacted to and dealt with the discovery of what it was, its inner conflict over this discovery, the irony of the fact that this lovable childlike being was a deadly weapon, the fact that the military people saw it as a threat and turned out to be right and yet not right, the robot's discovery that it could exercise free will that could overcome its programming, were all at the core of the story, not an "interference" with it (IMHO). And, though there was of course an antiwar tone to the movie, I saw the message of the movie not as "guns bad" but the fact that we can exercise free will to overcome reflex reactions to strike out in anger. The robot's programming to strike out automatically at attackers, and try to destroy them, I saw as an allegory of the human reflex to lose one's temper under attack and impulse to hurt people who have hurt one. Many people who have trouble controlling their anger feel guilty and conflicted about this much as the robot did. The robot's witnessing of the death of the deer, from a gun, was to me an allegory of a child's discovery that anger can have destructive consequences -- I too have this terrible thing inside me, so if I let myself get angry, will I too do something terrible? I saw a message that, even if one has a temper problem, it is possible to learn to control one's temper through the exercise of will. And the message was subtle. And it couldn't have been gotten across very well without guns and weapons as part of the story. Matter of fact, without the weapons theme, there would not have been much of the story left, at least much that we haven't seen before in other movies such as ET, which otherwise had pretty much the same plot. Not saying you have to agree with any of this, Susan, but I think you have been puzzled by why so many people like the movie, so maybe this will make that more understandable. I think that most people who found IRON GIANT touching and moving (which seems to be most people who saw it) had this take on it -- were rather than seeing an extraneous message that was slapped on top of the plot and got in the way of a cute but trite "boy and his robot" story. Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 May 2000 14:12:27 -0400 (EDT) From: "Hilary L. Hertzoff" Subject: Re: b/leguin/jung/tolkien On Thu, 4 May 2000, Donald G. Keller wrote: > But that wasn't all; my brain continued in overdrive, and before long I > had more stuff lined up. Consider the following items as a group: > > 1) Frodo and Gollum on the lip of Mt. Doom > > 2) Buffy and Angel at the mouth of Acathla's vortex ("Becoming") > > 3) Jonathan and "his" monster at the edge of the pit ("Superstar") > > 4) Buffy and Faith on the roof ("Graduation Day") > > 5) [just to throw in a ringer] Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty at Reichenbach > Falls > > Doubtless there are more! > > Now, I grant that each of these situations is slightly different, with > different motivations and different outcomes...but in essence it's the > same moment, the same mythologem or psychologem (to use Jungian > terms): the ego and the shadow grappling on the brink of disaster, at a > crisis point storytellingwise...and it's the shadow in each case who takes > the fall and makes possible the ego's survival. > This is incredibly bizarre in that I have to add another case (figurative rather than literal abyss) - when Patsy Walker summons up the devil to save her husband's life by restoring his dark powers, at the expense of her sanity and (eventually) her death. Hilary Hilary L. Hertzoff From here to there, Mamaroneck Public Library a bunny goes where a bunny must. Mamaroneck, NY hhertzof@wlsmail.wls.lib.ny.us Little Bunny on the Move hhertzof@panix.com by Peter McCarty ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 May 2000 15:34:19 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: Iron Giant (was b/Christian virtues) On Sat, 6 May 2000, Susan Kroupa wrote: > GALAXY QUEST (which we watched again last night) is everything PHANTOM > MENACE should have been and more. Of course, it had a great script AND a > plot and didn't rely soley on it's wowzer special effects. I had to stand up through _Galaxy Quest_ (overcrowded theater) and I did not get restless. (During _Phantom Menace_, by contrast, I got restless while lying down on a comfy couch.) I doubt I'd want to see _Galaxy Quest_ again, but I certainly enjoyed it, and the Goblin Valley was really cool. During the final battle scene in _Menace_, in the huge, rather pointless looking space with all the walkways (so similar to ones in previous Lucas films), Berni was reminded of the scene in _Galaxy Quest_ where Tim Allen and Sigorney Weaver have to make their way through those large piston-like thingies that could smash them in an instant. In both cases, the device is pointless and exists only to look impressive and dangerous. But one of them is funny, the other isn't. > We'll have to agree to disagree on IG. I went into the film really > _wanting_ to love it, but came out disappointed. I knew nothing of IG when I saw it, just that a friend had recommended it. It was, as I tried to imply and as Gayle has discussed in her usual insightful way, an integrated story. That, I think, is part of the secret of delivering Message. But obviously it doesn't work for everyone. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 May 2000 00:20:07 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/burroughs(william) BUFFY: Stay back--or I'll pull a William Burroughs on your leader here. XANDER: You'll bore him to death with free prose? BUFFY: Was I the only one awake in English that day? I'll =kill= him! - --"New Moon Rising" William Burroughs (dead only a couple years) was one of the Beats, along with poet Allen Ginsberg and novelist Jack Kerouac (whose =On the Road= Xander was reading in "Choices"). Burroughs' best-known work is =Naked Lunch=; he also wrote some quasi-science fiction (=Nova Express=, etc.). He was famous for his avante-garde "cutup" technique, where he'd take a stretch of prose and literally cut the page in pieces and reassemble the phrases in a different order (kind of like Hilary's post the other day--what happened there, Hilary?). Hence Xander's line. A well-known biographical fact about Burroughs is that, in the early 50s before he became a writer, he was messing around one day and decided to "pull a William Tell" on his wife, missed, and shot her dead. Hence Buffy's lines. My speculation is that Marti Noxon's original script had only Buffy's first line; when a lot of people who read it went "Huh?" they inserted the puzzled pause and the exchange between Xander and Buffy. Anyway, that's the Burroughs joke. (Had to explain it to my daughter as well.) So is it still funny? ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #102 *****************************