Fred,
You didn't twist my words at all - just made them a bit
clearer ;) Nice job making sense of all these disparate
thoughts and organizing them into a well thought-out
piece!
Dave Z.
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Frederick Zackel"
<fzackel@w...> wrote:
> Somebody help me out here. I read:
>
> "I would refer you also to David Corbett's piece on
existentialism
in the
> current "Reflections of a Private Eye." In the
existentialist
view the
> world is chaotic, lacking in any meaning other than
the meaning a
person
> creates for himself through his actions. That's
noir. The
protagonist in
> such stories is no more doomed than we all are. If
you excuse the
> sexist language, "Man's Fate."
>
> Then I read Bruce, saying,
> "Charles Ardai drew recently in speaking with him
privately after
his
> fine B'con panel on noir. He said that the Greeks
felt their
universe
> was determined by the gods, and when a Greek tragedy
suggests that
the
> gods were acting completely arbitrarily or unjustly,
as in Oedipus
Rex,
> it created a noir universe."
>
> Einstein said he couldn't believe that God played
dice with the
universe.
> But He does.
>
> Clendon then wonders, "The protagonist can't win
because there is
too much
> chaos in the way?"
>
> Okay...
>
> And I started thinking about our current bunch of
All-American
creationists
> and Intelligent Designers, (twisting Dave Z.'s
words) "all
grasping for
> whatever hope they can get a glimmer of only to have
it ripped
away." In a
> universe of chaos, those religionists (?) are noir.
They are
screwed. To
> twist Kerry J. Schooley's words, they "aspire to a
set of values
that have
> no meaning outside their world... It is a set of
values that can
only be
> maintained with a lot of work done for no purpose
other than to
try to make
> that particular set of values work, and the strength
of character
to ignore
> the obvious consequences of that work..." Without
Providence,
without a
> loving personal god who makes sense and who watches
over them,
they're
> screwed.
>
> Religion is rooting around in here somewhere, like a
pig with
truffles. In
> his daughter's biography, Hammett, an ex-Catholic,
had come to
believe that
> Random Chance ruled, which puts a sort of religious
(or ex-
religious) spin
> on "falling beams."
>
> Kent's right, too, I think, that, "So in the end,
ironically, I
think Noir
> is about a growth in human awareness/consciousness.
I think it
means we have
> a chance. We have hope. It means we're willing to
face the ugly
things in
> life and go on from there." In a cold chemical
universe (such as
Camus or
> Satre's) we go on. I also don't think established,
hierachial
religion is
> the answer to feeling Doomed. I look at
Creationists, for
example, who talk
> like the Flintstones was How It Really Was 'way back
when, and I
think, in
> our post-modern world, they're losers, they're
doomed.
>
> Then Mark says,
> "Brigid slips out of police custody after leaving
Spade's presence
> (perhaps seduces one of the cops, grabs his gun and
shoots him?).
We
> next hear of her in Casablanca. She's heard someone
has
information
> about the Falcon; he gambles at Rick's Cafe
Americain.
Unfortunately,
> as she enters the club, she spots Guttman and Cairo,
who have
heard the
> same rumors."
>
> Oh man I'll go see that movie!
>
> Fred Zackel
> "lakhn mit yashtsherkes"
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 01 Oct 2005 EDT