Quick, Dirty, and Dismissive Movie Reviews for the New Year

Somehow I have watched a slew of movies that I actually loved (and some that I didn't) in the last month or so that I thought I'd talk about.

The Serious Stance

Upon reading Simone de Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity, I was struck by how close her description of the ‘serious man’ resembles a certain species of self-righteous political disagreement, especially online. Here, I attempt to explicate upon some of her remarks about how I see it playing out in Twitter, ‘the culture wars,’ and wider discourse. I develop a notion, born from her serious man, of a subjective state I call the serious stance and how it fails to consider error and change. I instead argue we ought to take up the fallible stance.

Double Feature Series #2: Mob Justice

This is the second post in what I'm calling my double feature series, in which I post a pairing of two movies that I love. These movies will usually be made 20+ years apart and are thematically related somehow. I see one as a sort of a spiritual successor of the other. The point is to avoid blatantly obvious pairings or homages that have been pointed out before (like certain Woody Allen movies combined with certain Bergman movies, for example). Instead, I aim to bring two seemingly disconnected films together, into one thought.

The second entry in this series illustrates the temporal possibilities of influence we see in film! They are two quite harrowing movies about the dangers of mob justice presented by Fritz Lang and Thomas Vinterberg respectively:

On Vagueness

How do we measure and classify things quantitatively? What is the true difference between a pile, heap, handful, and speck of sand? Are these true distinctions or conventions of language? At what point does one become the other if one grain of sand is being removed? This is a problem one can find in many features of our life and the way we use language. So many of our concepts are loosely defined instances of a qualitative pragmatism designed to enable us to have a coherent conversation without defining our terms every step of the way. To really get to this is a problem I would like to discuss something that gets at this issue of vagueness: sorites paradox.

On 'Old Moralists'

I do find something particularly striking about this quote from Nietzsche; it is not exactly what he intended to illustrate, I think, but it stirs up something for me...

That tartuffery, as stiff as it is virtuous, of old Kant as he lures us along the dialectical by paths which lead, more correctly, mislead, to his ‘categorical imperative’ - this spectacle makes us smile, we who find no little amusement in observing the subtle tricks of old moralists and moral-preachers.

It reminds of an interesting kind of phenomenon we (at least I) see every day; we often despise or tire of those who moralise small actions in the world (small actions constantly, that is, not just one-offs). It seems at least prima facie true that we would want a more just world and would like society to enforce just norms and practices, so why is it that we see moralisers as more of an obstacle, or, something to be ignored?

False Solutions & Climate Change

The (Very) Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie or (The Young and the Damned)

(an essay submitted for a paper at uni)

In this essay I use insights given on society by Herbert Marcuse to analyse the way in which the development of advanced society and economic relations has perpetuated climate change and mitigated the efforts to prevent it. I begin by outlining Marcuse’s notion of false needs, which is drawn on in the rest of the essay. Next I discuss three ways in which advanced industrial society has perpetuated climate change which are; (1) perpetual economic growth; (2) wasteful incentives and; (3) the co-optation of the climate conscious movement and the administration of a substitutive mindset. Finally, I argue that in lieu of this, we adopt an eliminative mindset. Advanced industrial society (conceptualised by Marcuse) has accelerated and perpetuated climate change, even convincing us it has the solutions in substitutes, when the solution is in elimination.

Double Feature Series #1: Man's Search for Meaning

This is the first post in what I'm calling my double feature series, in which I post a pairing of two movies that I love. These movies will usually be made 20+ years apart and are thematically related somehow. I see one as a sort of a spiritual successor of the other. The point is to avoid blatantly obvious pairings or homages that have been pointed out before (like certain Woody Allen movies combined with certain Bergman movies, for example). Instead, I aim to bring two seemingly disconnected films together, into one thought.

Rowan Recommends: Sawdust and Tinsel (1953)

Who gave Bergman the authority to write such beautiful scripts?

I see Phantom Thread (2017) as the spiritual successor of this film.