Media

[lulie]

What are the best movies, TV programmes, books (fiction and non-fiction), and songs/music, with philosophical content? (Or if they're just really good. But if they're really good, they should have philosophical content.) Examples: Iron Man, House, Atlas Shrugged, Conjectures & Refutations. List all the most awesome stuff you've found.

Comments

[konora]

Watchmen. Defintely Watchmen.

And Animorphs, for being a young adult book series, had a lot of moral and philosophical content about the nature of war, otherness, etc.

[lulie]

Isn't Watchmen really dark, and there are like, no *good* chatacters? (I haven't read it, but that's what I've heard.) And anti-Rand?

[amidoh]

Something can still be a good read while being anti-Rand though from what I've heard it's not anti-Rand at all. You just have to RAGE while reading it.

[konora]

Really dark and with no absolutely good characters, yes. I'd say it was dystopian, but an extremely good read anyway. The "main" character, Rorschach, reminds me in some ways of Rand's sort of characters, with a very hard and fast view of what's right and wrong in his view. Him and The Comedian are both portrayed that way, albeit to different ends. But I would definitely say that Watchmen has a much different tone than any Rand I've read. I'm in the process of reading the comic, and a little over halfway through, so if things change I'll revise my statement. But thus far it has very interesting characters with a variety of flaws. The morality of the characters is very much left open for the reader to interpret, but given such a wide variety of them to choose from, I don't think it'd be too hard to pick at least one that was morally good from any one person's perspective

[konora]

The "main" character, Rorschach, reminds me in some ways of Rand's sort of characters, with a very hard and fast view of what's right and wrong in his view.

Sorry, I was distracted while writing that. ^^;

[lulie]

Anti-Rand as in, if all the characters are bad, and Rorschach is an Objectivist/Randian, and Rorschach is bad, it's kind of implied that Randism made fun of?

[konora]

I wouldn't say that Rorschach is an Objectivist/Randian or bad. Bad perhaps in the sense that he kills criminals, but that's one of the moral issues that the book brings up, and even then it makes no clear distinction of whether it's right or wrong. As I said, the morality is largely left up to the readers, so in that way it is nothing like Rand's work. There is no condemnation for Rorchach's actions except from the general public in the story, and they most certainly are portrayed in a negative way - they tend to be ungrateful, weak, and immoral. So in that way perhaps there is some parallel with Rand's writing.

Honestly, Watchmen reminds me a great deal of Rand's sort of philosophy, just told in a much different way. Whereas Rand had characters representing ideas, Watchmen seems to have characters who carry those ideas. I don't want to go too much into the details, but it is heavily implied from the perspective of various characters that the "superheroes" are the only truly moral people left - everyone else is weak, or immoral, or

[lulie]

Ah, I imagine that a world that makes no clear distinction between right and wrong would bother me. I always hate it when it gets unclear whether a character we thought was good turns ungood or not (I don't know if you've seen the TV series Heroes, but that happens there a bit). I dunno, though, maybe I'd like Watchmen.

Well, I haven't read it at all, just going on what other people have said. Presumably because they all have bad flaws.

[konora]

I've watched Heroes through season 2, so I think I know what you mean. Watchmen may be a little iffy on that for you, but I still think it would be worth it to at least flip through the first couple of pages in a bookstore or library. But I will admit that it brings up very interesting moral questions, and in what I found was an enjoyable way. Moral ambiguousness might taint that for you though.

It depends highly on what flaws the reader considers bad, honestly. Rorschache's cold-bloodedness might be a bad flaw to someone, while someone else thinks it's a good thing. *shrug*

[lulie]

I might try the first few pages of Watchmen then, like you said. :)

[shadowspinner]

I confess to being mildly impressed at the implication that you actually managed to sit down and read one of her books. I attempted the sample pages on amazon and found the writing to be rather bad quality and really quite purple.

[lulie]

Audio books ftw. ;)

I did read the book version of Anthem. It was a bit oddly-written at parts, but shrug.

I've heard this a lot though, so what's bad about her writing style?

(What do you mean by 'quite purple'?)

[shadowspinner]

Purple is a short hand way of saying flowery, overly colourful, sickeningly descriptive and overwritten to the point where it is detrimental to the text instead of helping to illustrate the point (I should mention that thus far I've only attempted her fiction). The first page or two of The Fountainhead brings this strongly to mind, though I'm willing to entertain the idea that there was in fact a point to it that was addressed later on. The descriptive term purple prose is usually used in relation to romance novels, if that gives you a little more context

[konora]

I'd have to agree. I've read Anthem and went a few chapters into Atlas Shrugged. The philosophy was the interesting part, so I can only imagine that her non-fiction is more interesting. Anthem was a decent read, and actually a very good idea for its time, though now the plot comes off as cliche because it's been used in many other stories. Atlas Shrugged on the other hand... its plot may be marvelous (I didn't get far enough into it to tell) but everything said about the characters is true. I've heard that it was deliberate, but frankly it could have been done a lot better. And probably in less pages.

[lulie]

Neat, learn a new word (or meaning of an old one) every day

[konora]

Which speaker do you mean? Christopher Hurt?
Why do you recommend the Fountainhead first?