Too long for the casual reader...
I don’t want to teach literature. It’s the essays. I just couldn’t stand to grade a hundred badly written essays every week for the next thirty years…over and over again explaining why that logic in the thesis is amazingly flawed…and that’s if your lucky, that’s if you have the energy past correcting the grammar (which, I, myself gave up years ago for the convenience of real communication)…
However, I would like to study more literature. Today, I started a Chaim Potok kick (I sat down to do homework and ended up reading My Name is Asher Leve strait thru and now I’m half way thru The Chosen)…re-living my high school days…I don’t think I’ve really liked a creative work of mine since those days….I’m too busy, or have been to humbled, I’m not sure…
Back to Potok: Much of his work deals with the nature of Good and Evil (what great work doesn’t?), the concept of choice, the sacred choice granted man by God, and what makes a man evil…I happened to just finish Clockwork Orange, if you’re not familiar with the movie/book then I’ll say it’s about much the same thing (this horribly violent teenager (part of a horribly violent gang in the future) is finally arrested and put thru an experimental corrective procedure where he is brainwashed with aversion therapy to suppress all violent urges…this brings in the questions of can a man be good if it is not his own free choice…can such a man be saved (in the religious sense)…and can good exist without evil…ect. ect. ect.) …anywho, there are many obvious parallels and I once read a paper arguing that the main character in CO could be a Christ figure…but what I’m thinking is the argument that could be made in both Asher and CO for both of the lead characters being a figure for the anti-Christ....this is something that I desperately want to talk about with someone who is much better versed than I in literature analysis and religious imagery in modern texts…
…this also brings us back to my writing…I’ve been reading CO for a while so my pre-writing brainstorms have contained a lot of these issues (along with a hansel and gretel story I’m “writing” and a college re-make of the Oedipus trilogy)…but I haven’t really started any of these possible tangents…except for some small dialogue pieces that aren’t really connected to the plots yet….
Tonight, I was not at all tired when my friends left for the evening at ten…I should have started my homework, but instead I read Asher Lev, saving my homework for five am this morning (in two hours) when I’ll be too tired to really care if it’s any good and just get it out....it worries me that I don’t put my concentration into anything I write anymore…that I wait until I’m too tired to notice that the work isn’t good to even begin…that I’m not working on creative musings anymore…
In completely other news: I saw Million Dollar Baby two nights ago…I hated it. Don’t look at me that way and don’t interrupt me with gasps of outrage…(WARNING DO NOT CONTINUE READING IF YOU HAVN’T SEEN THE MOVIE…)I know it’s a well-done movie; it was very well done, well acted. But it comes down to what you consider a “good” movie…this movie did have me caring about the characters, I suffered along with them (and wanted to die by the end of it, to bite my tongue hard enough to cause a flow of blood so turgid that I never wake up), it was evocative certainly…but in the end it was just too depressing and for what? This was not a documentary…art must be true to life, yes, but it is not life, endings are fitted, tailored. A good movie to me follows Dante’s trilogy: You start out lost in the wilderness, you descend into hell, but then you work thru purgatory and rise back up. The last shot of this movie leaves us with a character who is in the depths of despair, hopeless…the only reason he didn’t commit suicide is because “he had nothing left,” his heart was empty…
…it would have been so easy to fix too…keeping all the same shots in the movie. You begin the ending sequence with Morgan Freedman reading the letter to the daughter from the office, then you move to the shot of the father in the dinner, then you cut back to Morgan sitting in the gym and show the scene where Danger walks back in, “Get your gloves on kid, you’ve missed a lot of training.” And then slowly pan out watching various young fighters train for another grab at the dream….
It could have worked….it would have worked (in my-oh-so-humble opinion)…this ending remains honest to the intent of the movie…but shows the light at the end of the tunnel, the new dream, the next generation: hope.
Honestly, I’m not sure if this wasn’t Clint’s way making his character more important to the detriment of the ending…
I would kill to hear a well worded defense of the current ending (the academy so loves it, I must be missing something…) the best my music friends can do is say, “this is the only way it could have ended…any other way would have been a sell out…” How? Why? Why isn’t this ending true to the intent of the movie? Why is the original ending better? Anyone?
Speaking of music people, Abra thru a lovely little Oscar’s get together…. thank you very much for letting me and Meghan talk thru the entire thing…
I talked to Anthony today, he and Joanne phoned yesterday…called my land line (because he saw I wasn’t online…), I never give out that number and so I almost didn’t answer it, I thought it was a telemarketer. He has actually bought the tickets…unfortunately by the time the charges actually went thru on his credit card it was past midnight and the sale they were trying to catch was over, so the ended up paying nearly $500 more per ticket!!!!!!!!! All to come see me (and the Great West of course)…I feel horribly guilty, I’m only one person so it would have been cheaper for me to go visit them again…but they are geographers and travelers and in the end I think this three week American Road Trip will be the best vacation ever!
My mother has been calling but I haven’t been around at decent hours to talk to her…she’s leaving cryptic messages about being worried about one of my aunts…an aunt that I truly love and am worried about as well…so there’s that as well…
The part has come-in to fix my computer…now I just have to pay for it…bloody hell…
Well, it’s about time to start that homework…I hate nights where I don’t sleep (or rather I love the nights, I hate the day after…)
I’m sending good karma out to the whole human race tonight…
…the adventure continues…