On Being a Jackass

Feb 04, 2009 10:49

Infernal Repetition in Groundhog Day and My Now-Private Journal Entry from the other day ( Read more... )

critical phantasmagoria, i must still be a jackass

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Is it jackassitude WHEN...? thelican February 5 2009, 01:42:02 UTC
Okay, so it's been too many years since I've seen the movie to remember accurately. Still, the detail that remains most salient for me, though, is how (Take, what, 2? 3? 4? Which level?), after Billy Murray's character finds out that Andie Macdowell's character studied French Symbolist poetry in college, he returns the next time around and busts out the, what, Verlaine? Rimbaud? And, of course, Macdowell's character is totally charmed. Score ( ... )

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Yes, it's jackassitude when his aim was solely to get laid. all_unnecessary February 5 2009, 01:53:28 UTC
His aims change once he starts playing piano. Is that Nietschean?

Diamandoid if I squinted: Ha! Personals ad as dog whistle: also Ha! If I do end up putting a personals ad up somewhere, can I steal your "je ne parle que les gens qui m'entendent"? THAT'd weed em out.

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Re: Yes, it's jackassitude when his aim was solely to get laid. thelican February 5 2009, 03:17:49 UTC
See, I don't remember the piano-playing. Can't say.

The Rimbaud (was it Rimbaud? Do you remember? Who and what was it?) quoting struck me as merely an attempt to get laid, last time I saw it. And that's probably it. But I'd like to watch it again and complicate the matter.

You know, I think the line is the Marquis de Sade's. I was very taken with it age nineteen when I first encountered it on a postcard near the Centre Pompidou.

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Re: Yes, it's jackassitude when his aim was solely to get laid. all_unnecessary February 5 2009, 04:03:11 UTC
Do you have Netflix? It's one of their INSTANT WATCH films, so if you've got your puter set up properly, you can watch it RIGHT NOW.

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owl unnecessary jones_casey February 5 2009, 03:29:25 UTC
a) it's so nice to be able to read insights from people like you and thel.

2) to everyone else reading along, "nothing worth seeing" is untrue but as a new draft's been published all's well.

c) "there seems to be some discrepancy in the author’s reproduction of this quote, which appears as an epigram in sandra m. gilbert’s introduction (p. ix) to betty wing’s translation of hélène cixous and catherine clément, the newly born(minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1986) and reads: “everyone knows that a place exists which is not economically or politically indebted to all the vileness and compromise. that is not obliged to reproduce the system. that is writing. if there is a somewhere else that can escape the infernal repetition, it lies in that direction, where it writes itself, where it dreams, where it invents new worlds.”

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Re: owl unnecessary all_unnecessary February 5 2009, 04:09:59 UTC
C) aw man that's too ludic and postmodern. nothing escapes infernal repetition. EVAR. it's just not as infernal when you can get behind the curtain/inside the automaton (where the chess player/religion/jackassitude is very uncomfortably sitting).

B) gah. I'd rather post this whole thing as a personal ad than what I came up with earlier.

A) Thanks Jonesy, I hope you get that I ain't an owl-h8er.....

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jones_casey February 5 2009, 04:24:41 UTC
but here's where i disagree with you.
his aim was not solely to get laid.
he had that with nancy taylor.
he could have that with just about any woman in punxsutawney i'm sure.
and it was not solely to get laid by rita.
phil was in love.
phil being phil, this was new to him, and he didn't really realize what was happening to him.
and he certainly didn't know how to express his love.
he was used to being unloved and not caring about it.
i don't think the cause of the infernal repetition was solely phil being a jackass.
because phil was perfectly okay with being a jackass.
when phil met rita he realized, unconsciously, that there was actually a good reason not to be a jackass.
jackasses don't get fallen-in-love-with.
jackasses don't get to be happy.
phil was only a jackass because it seemed to be the best way to get by in a world filled with jackassery.
and phil didn't just stop being a jackass by the end of the film, he was gunning for sainthood.
a complete switch to altruism (i still haven't had the chance to read nightspore's book yet ( ... )

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