Re: RARA-AVIS: Pelecanos on dogfighting in the New Republic

From: Richard Moore ( moorich@aol.com)
Date: 05 Sep 2007


--- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Michael Robison
<miker_zspider@...> wrote:
>
> Brian Thornton on training otherwise tame pets to kill
> for sport and butchering cattle:
>
> I've participated in the latter, and I have to tell
> you, half the time the cattle didn't even know they
> were dead. There's a reason that a group of mindless
> people are frequently referred to collectively as
> "cattle." Smart, they are not. They never know
> what's coming to them, and they have a pretty good
> life up to that point. More to the point it's done
> humanely.
>
> *****************
> There are at least some subtle contradictions in the
> cow and pit bull discussion. Pelecanos praises the
> passive and harmless nature of his half breed pit
> bull, while the very same nature in a cow is likely to
> evoke disgust. So do we value this passivity or
> despise it? The answer lies between the pages of
> noir. Noir glorifies struggle, stripped of any moral
> content, as a bare knuckle existential celebration of
> life. Thus, the pit bull's easy ways are only
> admirable in light of its propensity towards a raging
> savagery. The lovable exterior is a thin veneer
> masking a killer. The cow is so overwhelmingly docile
> that it just don't get no respect. And when it does
> erupt into a dangerous animal, such as in a bullfight,
> it gets respect. So what on the surface appears to be
> an admiration for a passive nature is deconstructed to
> reveal a reverence for savagery.
>
> The above is my pomo interpretation of the privileged
> passive binary over its agressive opposite. Hope you
> had your hip boots on.
>
> miker
>

Man, as the Austin Lounge Lizards once sang "My ears can't read the words your lips are writing."

The individual words appear to be English but be damned if this makes sense to me.

Oh, I take that back. What the hell is a "pomo"? Is that an English word? I recognize the other individual words of "...my pomo interpretation of the privileged passive binary over its agressive opposite" even though together they make no sense whatsoever.

Maybe there's a "har, har" here that I am missing.

Richard Moore



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