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Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (2012)
Sexual terrorism from repression to liberation to desecration: A case for the globalisation of Swedish rape law?
Firstly just to express total solidarity with the deaf men of Milwaukee Wisconsin who suffered at the hands of serial child sex abuser Fr. Laurence C. Murphy. Secondly to say I'm an Irish Catholic and knew the singing priest Fr. Tony Walsh - 'Fr. Elvis' - as a boy. A number of pedophiles accessed my family, sexually grooming and serial abusing and in the Dublin of the day the culture of pederasty was pervasive. Thirdly allow me open by asking people to consider Fr. Murphy's excuses - offered in therapy:
A). 'There was rampant homosexuality amongst the boys. I fixed the problem'; B). I thought if I played around with a kid once per week they would have their needs met'; C). I thought I was taking their sins on myself'; D). It was self-education for them they were confused about sex'; E). Would feel penis. If erect would masturbate them'; F). Afterward I prayed and went to confession'.
The man felt he was doing good not evil. How then was his moral compass so distorted and disorientated? Would cyber porn producers and users of child porn today offer better excuses? - we've heard them and know them to be equally self-serving and delusional. Being homosexual was universally taboo up until the 1980's and it was considered better to be sexually disorientated or sexually dysfunctional with a view to a life of celibacy, secular or priestly. But for all their crimes no perverted Roman Catholic priest that I am aware of was ever charged with the crime of rape and murder common enough among pedophiles and rapists. Now this may be difficult but consider modern porn and its rapaciousness. Consider the fact that most porn is not only about the objectification and exploitation of women but also about their brutalization. Pedophilia is rampant and causally peppered through main stream cyber porn which rapidly descends from relative eroticism to utter abomination.
So what has happened is that consent is all that's is required to make sexual abuse permissible today even if the person is a minor; even if the woman simply signed up for sex and not the brutalizing desecration of her body; even if the sex was consenting but the permission to broadcast & circulate was not. Cyber porn is so controversial that Google maintains it is not responsible for acting as the international traffic cop and seemed curiously resigned to compromising its own browser Google Chrome with its competitors search engines. Because Google understand the corporate tornado on the horizon, cyber porn being a record - in most instances - of sex crime, knowing that many of the victims will sue. It makes me feel like signing up for a course in Swedish rape law because this makes the Juliann Assange case - which involved the charges 'Sex by surprise' and 'Sex with too much asking', - seem like a great idea. How about 'Sex with brutalizing & degrading consequences'; 'Sex for the purpose of making porn without consent'; 'Sex with adolescents too stoned & too immature to know the implications of what they were doing', and 'Sex for the purpose of sexually re-orientating and dis-orientating the victim'? So what has happened is that we have simply changed the definition and function of sexual terrorism from repression to 'sexual liberation'. The Catholic Church has stood up to the plate, paid the price and yet the accusatory finger still points towards the past. But the Church must reform the celibate model of priesthood which according to former Benedictine Richard Sipes 'Selects, cultivates, protects, defends and produces sexual abusers'.
This is a marvelous and sympathetic movie about a wonderfully courageous group of deaf men who show us the meaning of the word solidarity. It provides a valuable and necessary understanding of the errors of the past without seeking to agitate, animate or radicalise. But one must ask the Director Alex Gibney to consider the far more perilous issue of cyber porn and modern sexual values and just where we are heading with the rate of homosexuality rising towards 25% in Cosmopolitan & Metropolitan areas where stable 'straight',and monogamous family units are rapidly becoming vestigial. Judging from cyber porn there are those so liberated that it is a wonder they are not permanently incontinent. Can a woman really have animalistic sex with two men hung like donkeys and ever hope to function properly again; and why do women cast themselves in the role of sexual gladiators? In terms of the police phrase used in the documentary to describe pedophilia in the Catholic Church 'Noble cause corruption', might not those advocating the GLBTQ, Libertine and Hedonist agendas consider whether the term now also applies to their sexual crusade?
At the Sea of Tiberius as Jesus watched St. Peter leap from the boat with almost nothing on he knew St. Peter had sexual issues and was at least immodest in that most sublime of Biblical scenes from John 21 titled 'The Restoration of St. Peter'. He had also chastened the Disciple Nathanael at the time of his recruitment, three years earlier, for spending too much time under "The Fig Tree", (John 2: 48). And yet Nathanael is at the scene at the Sea of Tiberius to witness the risen Jesus prepare a meal for his followers and take St. Peter aside, to chasten and prepare him for the way ahead. Please God Pope Benedict XVI's successor Pope Francis is up for a restoration of the priesthood. And as a secular adult community surely we can also rise to this debate given that we see fit to rise to just about every and any other kind of bait? Let me conclude by offering a quote from the retired gay Archbishop of Milwaukee Most Reverend Rembert Weakland (1977-2002) for this is by far the wisest statement to emerge from this challenging documentary:
We're a Church of imperfect people. Jesus wasn't afraid of humanity and we shouldn't be either'
Room 237 (2012)
Room 237: Kubrick's 'The Shining': The Apollo Landing Unlocked
The central disclosure in Rodney Ascher's documentary review of Stanley Kubrick's, The Shining, is that 'Room 237', is a reference to the Hollywood studio Kubrick staged the footage of the Moonlanding in. A tantalizing suggestion which is developed by earlier consideration of staged World War II documentary footage. It's important to note the veracity of the Moonlanding itself is not being challenged just the footage.
But the movie is really an exploration into the nature of reality and histories constant echoing themes from the references to American Indians, to Hitler, World War II and the Holocaust, the Moonlanding and repressed sexual themes. The movie makes an excellent point of how people and society tend to forget their own worst atrocities. The ghost butler who Nicholson accuses of killing his family denies any knowledge as though the simple act of 'forgetting', exonerated him. But then it's more of an invitation to forget by way of engaging in denial. A Holocaust denial soon becomes sexual denial: for denial, is denial, is denial, is denial.
But there's no denying that the many insights offered confirm The Shining was always an allusion to something other than Stephen King's novel, the title itself seeming to reference the Moon - 'The Shining' - though we are asked to believe it is about the young boy Danny's gift. Had man landed on the Moon in 1969 surely there would have been a moon base by now particularly as a mission to Mars is being planned with a view to establishing a colony there? And the quest for astronauts for that mission is supposedly being thrown open to anyone over the age of 18? So the space race is artistic narrative or at least has the potential to become so quite apart from being about space exploration.
As for the Holocaust references there are plainly many according to the documentary makers but the key point that seems to connect the film to the Holocaust is this central notion of denial. The workers constantly moving about the hotel in overalls carrying an item of furniture - a coffee table, a chair, a carpet - plainly a twofold reference to both concentration camp guards casually going about their business and a studio setting. All of which leads into carefully crafted sexual association - men in overalls. Kubrick is certainly divulging something here. Even the many instances of anomalies from shot to shot which very successfully compound the looming sense of crisis. One knew something was wrong but not quite what as the leering grimace of Nicholson became increasingly maniacal. But then Jack Nicholson always was the perfect American anti-hero - the real James Dean - ugly but oddly endearing and charmingly attractive too, just like the Nazi's. A portrait in deception. And as the documentary goes over shots of 'Jack', lumbering about the hotel one sees another of Kubrick's intentions, the Hotel was selected for its set like qualities of facades and stages. It was more surreal than real and designedly so. Jack is totally out of place in the bourgeois setting much like his Nazi predecessors.
Ought we also consider that the historical narrative is more personal than we know, and provides an amplified backdrop of our own worst tendencies for surely the hatchet is the dominant theme - the one Nicholson used to break down the door? So the hatchet passes out of time via Native American history into Nicholson's hands. But it's not just about violence it's also about the notion of sexual violence and mans attitudes towards women and sex: "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". So we move smoothly along from Native American, to Jewish to Sexual Holocaust and if you doubt it spend an hour reviewing web porn and try to Google search handle "Lesbain, Cougar, MILF", to see how the women have now been recruited to Paedophilia - abusing their own and their neighbors daughters. The movie makes an excellent point of how people and society tend to forget their own worst atrocities using denial as a device for disregarding the obvious: "Porn promotes a culture of Rape", followed by "Don't be crazy porn is an expression of our sexual liberation". Followed by "No look honestly these kids are being raped - they're minors after-all". Followed by "So what they seem to be enjoying themselves". The ghost butler who Nicholson accuses of killing his family denies any knowledge of same as though the simple act of 'forgetting', exonerated him. The suggestion that temporary insanity and lack of awareness is a defense and that all one need do is place the matter beyond recollection or comprehension. And so Israel does not understand what it is doing to Palestine as if claiming and sticking to that excuse were sufficient to make the worlds most modern and oppressive racist & apartheid regime something other than what it plainly is. Zion as the ultimate expression of the West's military industrial complex. America's 'Belligerent Sparta' an easy match for China's 'Enfant Terrible' - North Korea. Re-enter the 'Terrible Twins', but not literally so this time.
One can chose to disregard the many insights offered including the hotel carpet the pattern of which matches the Apollo take-off site but surely there are simply too many pointers? For me the central assertion being made by the movie is very credible. Let me say no more except that I wait with baited breath for Director Rodney Ascher's next movie by which stage I will no doubt have been recruited to go to Mars whether I like it or not. For if history is a fabrication so are we. Room 237 is telling us something very far reaching certainly to the extent that key elements of our modern narrative are fabrications but well earned ones it seems. Dare we question the weave of our own Salvation too much?
Holy Motors (2012)
Man leaves room in search of companion for inner monkey, weds it and propagates the 'Fawlty.'
Man leaves room, slave to his inner monkey, proceeding to eliminate all possible functioning versions of self, disregarding invitations to relationship, life and love, favouring the crypt of self-gratification instead, eating decaying graveyard bouquets, rather than smelling the roses, prising the model from her plinth to prove to himself - notionally at any rate - his virility, while real woman must settle for brass monkey and an ill fated flight in air hostess uniform, less airplane, accompanied by co-pilot who also must keep appointment, with pavement below, from rooftop of Samaritan Hotel. But what of it? this man is heading home after-all to reside with his growed up monkey who by this time has spawned a child - and alcohol addiction - in a world rapidly turning pink, left home it seems by his Mother who chauffeurs him about in his own personalise Lying-mo-so-lyne which itself faces decommissioning because the market for 'Action', is drying up to which 'Amen, Amen', the cars conclude. And back the road the daughter reveals the truth, a man so criminally shy and self loathing that he simply cannot function socially and must present instead many pastiche selves, all actors set out for their various appointments which give telling insights into the characters core dilemmas: he will not earn, he will neither love nor learn for his core calling is to indulge his inner monkey. He must pass through all prospects and all things to emerge a self-sponsored, impromptu freelance actor refusing to get real, a narcissist finally peering out of his pink tower, home alone, with inner monkey in hand, plus offspring. In truth this is a Pro-Life, Pro-Relationship movie which lacks the balls to say so because saying so is to - on some level - reject the revolutions principle conclusion. An atomised narcissistic consumer society where we all tend to our own needs hopelessly, isolated, under-developed and alone to an extent where we must ultimately marry ourselves in a world rapidly fading to pink. And behind us the debris of life, the road kill, including the many mannequin dolls and lives that might have been. But as Europe flushes it's own future down the toilet many come to take the places left vacant for the Lord himself said he would invite in the dogs from the street to fills the vacancies. Speaking of which the hound in the opening scene is a fantastic creature in it's own right coming to occupy the theatre of life as the audience sleep through the performance. The pets, now more real than their owners, interlopers of sorts, wondering whether the hand that feeds might also be a meal when the feeding is done hinting the meat eaters may yet become the meal. Had the Director heard Sinead O'Connor's song 'Reason with me', he might have though to include it because it is in some way an ode to our inner monkey - Youtube: " Sinead O'Connor - Reason With Me (Best Fit Session) "
As You Like It (2006)
What Freud might have said if he hadn't been such a dose
To score this play 10 out of 10 is an insult. It was so sublimely executed. Utterly flawless in its presentation of the flawed fabric of our natures. If Lucifer were to seek my council and ask how he might elevate his gaze from his pismire prognostications about the human condition I'd recommend he watch this and then try to grow up some. Many of us see the worm in the weave but we tend to imagine it lends it character rather than destroying it. Paradise is not paradise without imperfection for love requires weakness to grow in compensation. Humility is hard learned and best achieved in degrees of defeat. A man defined by victories is a shallow and fickle thing. I stand here amid all my defeats prouder than I could have been if I had won the world. Shakespeare rocks and Brannagh brought that out with a vastly accomplished collective of actors and support crew. The Japanese theme in an English wood worked so well one wondered whether Britain might not be better suited to becoming part Japanese.
Colombiana (2011)
Zoe Salanda is the perfect embodiment of a Colombian coffee bean.
I've trebled my consumption of Colombian coffee since watching this film. I buy my GranArom in Lidl for half the price of the competitors. It's kind of addictive. In any event Zoe Saldana has the features of a chick coffee bean. She's cut, delicious, hypercool and best of all colored like treacle and designed for speed. She'll be back that's for sure. The film stands in the beautiful tradition of well shot Latin American action thrillers so rich in colour and atmosphere that they transcend the obvious struggle of the human condition. Latin America is the one poor place where I feel I could manage being poor. The luxury of the place seems to envelope the poverty like some kind of celestial cape. Perhaps Our Lady of Guadelupe stands with these people in a mysterious sense that radiates onto the places and the faces of it's people. That aside the profound longing for social justice beneath the wretched competition to get out and be successful by any means. The lads cut ice too, their accented Colombian English seems to rob the language of the notion of proper pronunciation its value and meaning happily lost in trans-enunciation. They almost seem to chew on their words savoring there character and form transforming a sentence into something else in the process highlighting that the effect of what is communicated is generally more important than its content. As good a bunch of bad guys as you're likely to meet. But as for how the Colombian coffee industry missed the opportunity for product placement I do not know. A very entertaining excellently shot movie driven by the remorseless kill-stinct of Catalinaaah. Oh to kill with impunity and grace bringing beauty to the deed. And that my friends is what Bitch-Killer movies are all about; the notion that violent death can be wrapped up in the aesthetic. The Angel of Death is most definitely a feminine spirit.
Red State (2011)
Do people with sexual dilemmas relate to the Cross for that reason and if so what are the implications for those round them?
Not to be missed for all kinds of reasons apart from obvious topicality. Michael Parks is made up for an Oscar for his part as the Preacher but John Goodman goes beyond the narrative to catch deeper more widely relevant thoughts such as in this beauty of a line he offers to his superiors in summation towards the end: "People do the strangest things when they believe they're entitled but they do even stranger things when they just plain believe". Hence we move beyond Theocracy and even 'Ideocracy'. The real question is one of utility: does this help or hinder the human course? And yes Jesus is there for the Faithful but sometimes he's a very disappointed Jesus. The answer is neither to judge nor to promote but simply to accept that which needs acceptance and love should not be so hard to accept even if it is a 'disordered', kind of love. Jesus was not nailed to a finger post with signs pointing here, there and everywhere at this, that, these and those. He was in reality nailed to a wooden crossroads which he was not prepared to traverse. Sometimes its the places we choose not to go and the things we choose not to say that determine us. St. James teach me to speak with tenderness, charity and respect. As for myself I chose to reside above a crossroads off a minor exit - a five crossroads. Dilemmas can keep their horns to themselves - as far as I'm concerned - but I respect anyone who chooses to cherish them. Still it needs to be said there's only one thing worse than being nailed to the horns of a dilemma and that's being nailed to the horns of someone else's dilemma. Diddly idle diddle dee we Irish hold the keys to all such nonsensical mystery. That one's for Pastor Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church, by the bi. Director Kevin Smith chooses to let the plot be lost in the end. Wise methinks but Goodman definitely gets it. Fear and presumption he maintains, in the commentary, are at the heart of the dilemma; one persons fears and everyone else's presumptions - I presume . Who would have thought John Goodman was an accomplished philosopher and observer of the human condition? But that quote - above - is so insanely relevant to the Irish political and economic situation as we traverse from Theocracy to 'Ideocracy'. As for myself I'd rather something else. I'd rather people thought for instance, about what they believed and the ideas they were being fed. I'd like people to juice the lot and make a tasty shake of it all - something like that. That's why Jesus wanted to be considered as 'The Bread of Life'. I agree entirely. We are so way too serious about it all. We really need to learn to play with life and the themes it presents in a mutually respectful manner and I suppose these new genres in movie making do just that which is why I constantly find myself picking them off the shelf in the video store which I still prefer going to. Now we are playing being poor, cold and destitute. It's so long since I've seen my own breath in my own home. Brings back memories. Kids breathing onto cold windows and drawing onto the vapour. There we are. As the oil runs out something is restored, something lost. A sense of innocence. Imagine vowing to be poor but that's precisely what many religious did and do. Oh for the line 'I do not want', to replace "I want', and 'I want more'. Long live the menials! As for religion there's lots of things to be doing with it apart from annoying errant lovers, love is love after-all an order way beyond the disorders of life. Lord Jesus guide the human ascent.
Margot at the Wedding (2007)
Margot represents the central dilemma of the bourgeois - and of herself, of course.
I loved this film I felt there was a possibility that we were looking at a single personality in various stages of her evolution - Margot. She was in any event the central character locked into some kind of existential prism, which kept reflecting her own neurosis back at her, but her central importance was that her dilemmas were representative of her class. She was constantly re- evaluating, detaching, re-connecting and then recoiling; moving from 'full on' to entirely detached at the flick of a switch; climbing the tree in the true competitive spirit of her class and then not knowing what to do with the laurel once she was on top because there was nothing left to compete for, no mentor or audience to perform too; the emptiness and neurosis, the anti-climax and the worm of corruption waiting to find its way in. Rescue comes but the drift and paranoia has already taken root; the tree will be sacrificed and the worm will twist.
The book scene review gets right to the heart of Margot and sends her into a tail spin she unwittingly admits she almost succumbed to the refrigerator man felt all her boundaries collapse and her needs surge forth: she had to ring her husband to avoid the fall; desire knocks at the door of the mid-life, middle class housewife and finds a vulnerable accomplice
the 'service' man
the fireman
the masturbation scene.
Her interpretation of her Father is in reality her best take on herself; she is so full of judgment that she cannot live her own life, to the extent of being unable to define herself. The shoe that had to be picked up was indicative of her boundary issues and of her tendency to judge, to fill in the gaps unnecessarily, as Leigh points out. The folks next door were fine - in their own mental slum perhaps- but fine with that. They needed to be avoided but Margot engaged them needlessly. It seems the key lesson the bourgeois must learn is not to project or expect their standards onto/from the rest of the world; until we do that we will continue to be victims of circumstances, including our own. The moral lens should always be pointed inward.
We are a class at sea in the modern world where all the false ceilings and class barriers have become transparent; we are on a level playing pitch; but this is a 3d pitch with the sharks 'Jaws' (Mac the knife - the under dog) beneath; evidence of decadence and loss of control all round (sexual boundary issues) and no ladder to the stars. We are like a class stuck in an elevator and our strong sense is that not only is upward motion no longer possible but that collapse is inevitable; the worm is already laying its egg, the mental-cognitive processes breaking down as we revert in and out of child like states.
And the tree we cut down is the connection with God: and why? Because the neighbors wanted us too; they're clearly faithless, from a Jewish perspective as indicated by the pig; the trotters fallen from the thrash are peered at with horror as much as to indicate the arrival of the Godless hoards, dumping their trotters in our rubbish - Black excels in these cameo moments.
But we cut the tree down on their behalf our last link to our own rise and rational and what does it do; it falls on all, a harbinger of doom, the wedding tent ruined, the appalling confession, the man child crying for forgiveness and more of the same at once, the temptress reverting to her safe space I'm only a girl after-all; in reality all woman making Kidman and Leigh look androgynous but the modern world gave her scope to play both roles at once and she exploited it with cunning; the Father knows enough to know that a prosecution would be fruitless; the sloppy loose end character exploiting the things not tied down giving him a kick in the balls is all the satisfaction the Father gets.
The child courting death beneath the tree; the strong sense of mortality an impending crisis; the utter 'directionless-ness', of the final scene. We are all simply wannabe road kill waiting for the inevitable accident; disturbingly defenseless, vulnerable and judgmental all at once: we must get our act together.
There is no attempt to aid Claude in his self-definition at this critical time and all the while the sense is that the sexual dimension is without any definition and that anyone could be anything and to anyone else the sisters are a shade away from being lovers. The boy is deliberately androgynous; the Mother apparently indifferent to the clear emasculation of the boy child even bleaching his emerging facial hair and giving him wax strips too boot. People afraid to take a stance on anything including something as vital as the sexual development of their own children: the PC liberal, the Marxist feminist, the atheistic and pagan conjoin as the bourgeois wander about aimlessly victim to all possibilities including drinking the Gurus bathwater; a doddering social elite a vestige of an institutional age - waiting for the curtain of history to fall on our final act.
The only way to project values is by living them; judgments arise as introspection on the observer's part, till then the shut mouth catches least flies.
Fantastic stuff
this guy rocks. The cast was brilliant