Report Blog Entry
The following are excerpts from my brief stint as an amateur film critic over at Letterboxd. These show the emergence of a budding, yet unshapely, philosophical rigor. Given the sobering distance of time, I have come to disagree with some of the propositions and presuppositions in them, explicit in enunciation or otherwise. However, I decided to neither overhaul them nor augment their arguments with a commentary from my present perspective. These excerpts, then, stand as a snapshot of my development as a thinker, of a restless dynamism frozen in between two fuzzy points in time.
Needless to say, the following contain spoilers for the films that are discussed.
1. [The Endless (2017), first published 09/06/2020]
Resolution and The Endless stand out to me as brilliant films because the horror they convey lies neither outside nor inside of ourselves, but in the very fabric of our understanding of this "outside" and "inside" of what we understand to be ourselves. The material outside is but a tune ceaselessly repeating itself, with iterability [as] its faithful servant. Reality, however many upheavals it endures, simply is. The ideal [interiority] of ourselves is but a concatenation of limited narrative beats we construct to make sense of the world. Freedom of thought is only intelligible in the unfreedom of the material.
In the end, we can only tell stories to console [our fragile selves from] the alienating [that is always already assailing us].
Resolution and The Endless stand out to me as brilliant films because the horror they convey lies neither outside nor inside of ourselves, but in the very fabric of our understanding of this "outside" and "inside" of what we understand to be ourselves. The material outside is but a tune ceaselessly repeating itself, with iterability [as] its faithful servant. Reality, however many upheavals it endures, simply is. The ideal [interiority] of ourselves is but a concatenation of limited narrative beats we construct to make sense of the world. Freedom of thought is only intelligible in the unfreedom of the material.
In the end, we can only tell stories to console [our fragile selves from] the alienating [that is always already assailing us].
2. [Sleep Has Her House (2017), first published 20/06/2020]
A filmic domestication of the sublime. However, it does not make the sublime any less threatening. To scale the sublime is, of course, an impossible enterprise. That said, the a priori futility of the act did not taint the effort; on the contrary, in a posteriori fact, the cinematic artifice helped to reinforce this confrontation with this violence-and-majesty incarnate. It is a disciplined bombardment of images and sound, whose undulating crescendos are like eels to my proverbial hands.
Pace Kant, this film exposes, in the face of the sublime, the helplessness of cognition and the armature of light and structure that comprises the faculty of understanding, like ball-and-socket joints enabling the intellect to move in the first place.
The wind, the forest, the water, the clouds, the stars, the light.
The encroaching fog, the riotous trees, the ravaging rapids, thunder and merciless lightning, sheer indifference, interminable darkness.
Two sides of the same coin.
The film, simply yet brutally, discloses—or makes apparent [past] the haze of technological hubris—the primordial fact that nature possesses a mind of its own, whose machinations are beyond comprehension.
Or, to risk sounding even more archaic, nature possesses spirit.
Or, to put it more properly, spirit inheres in nature.
Or, simply put, nature is sublime.
A filmic domestication of the sublime. However, it does not make the sublime any less threatening. To scale the sublime is, of course, an impossible enterprise. That said, the a priori futility of the act did not taint the effort; on the contrary, in a posteriori fact, the cinematic artifice helped to reinforce this confrontation with this violence-and-majesty incarnate. It is a disciplined bombardment of images and sound, whose undulating crescendos are like eels to my proverbial hands.
Pace Kant, this film exposes, in the face of the sublime, the helplessness of cognition and the armature of light and structure that comprises the faculty of understanding, like ball-and-socket joints enabling the intellect to move in the first place.
The wind, the forest, the water, the clouds, the stars, the light.
The encroaching fog, the riotous trees, the ravaging rapids, thunder and merciless lightning, sheer indifference, interminable darkness.
Two sides of the same coin.
The film, simply yet brutally, discloses—or makes apparent [past] the haze of technological hubris—the primordial fact that nature possesses a mind of its own, whose machinations are beyond comprehension.
Or, to risk sounding even more archaic, nature possesses spirit.
Or, to put it more properly, spirit inheres in nature.
Or, simply put, nature is sublime.
3. [Tales from Earthsea (2006), first published 02/08/2020]
Too Heideggerian for my taste, so much so that I'm instead reminded of Edith Stein's view on death: that we can only learn the significance of death through the death of others. This unconventional Ghibli entry forgets this social aspect of death, enveloping this instead into the concept of life, conceived not as a dyadic positive to death but as a relation of complementarity. There's so much vast territory to explore here, but it really took a Heideggerian route. It might be the fault of the source material, but it's not in my power to judge so (since I'm unfamiliar with it).
Too Heideggerian for my taste, so much so that I'm instead reminded of Edith Stein's view on death: that we can only learn the significance of death through the death of others. This unconventional Ghibli entry forgets this social aspect of death, enveloping this instead into the concept of life, conceived not as a dyadic positive to death but as a relation of complementarity. There's so much vast territory to explore here, but it really took a Heideggerian route. It might be the fault of the source material, but it's not in my power to judge so (since I'm unfamiliar with it).
4. [Traffic (2000), first published 16/08/2020]
[I]n the case of "drugs" the regime of the concept is different: there are no drugs "in nature." There may be "natural" poisons and indeed naturally lethal poisons, but they are not poisonous insofar as they are drugs. As with drug addiction, the concept of drugs suppose an instituted and an institutional definition: a history is required, and a culture, conventions, evaluations, norms, an entire network of intertwined discourses, a rhetoric, whether explicit or elliptical. . . . There is not, in the case of drugs, any objective, scientific, physical (physicalistic), or "naturalistic" definition (or rather there is: this definition may be "naturalistic," if by this we understand that it attempts to naturalize that which defies any natural definition or any definition of natural reality). One can claim to define the nature of a toxin; however, not all toxins are drugs, nor are they considered as such. Already one must conclude that the concept of drugs is a non-scientific concept, that it is instituted on the basis of moral or political evaluations; it carries in itself norm or prohibition, and allows no possibility of description or certification—it is a decree, a buzzword. Usually the decree is of a prohibitive nature; occasionally, on the other hand, it is glorified and revered: malediction and benediction always call to and imply one another. As soon as one utters the word "drugs," even before any "addiction," a prescriptive or normative "diction" is already at work, performatively, whether one likes it or not. This "concept" will never be a purely theoretical or theorizable concept. And if there is never a theorem for drugs, there can never be a scientific competence for it either, one attestable as such and which would not be essentially overdetermined by ethico-political norms.
. . . From the moment we recognize the institutional character of a certain concept of drugs, drug addiction, narcotics, and poisons, two ethico-political axiomatics [i.e. the "naturalistic, liberal, and indeed laxist decree" and "an artificialist policy and a deliberately oppressive position" in relation to "the drug problem"] seem to oppose each other. Briefly put, I am not sure that this contradiction is more than superficial; nor am I convinced that either of these logics can follow through to their conclusions; and finally I am not sure that the two so radically exclude each other. Let us not forget that both start from the same premises—that is, the opposition of nature and institution. And not simply of nature and the law, but indeed already of two laws, of two decrees. Naturalism is no more natural than conventionalism.
. . . As long as we have not recognized the full magnitude of this enigma . . . , beyond the opposition of presence and absence, of the real and the imaginary, even beyond a properly ontological question, the philosophical, political, and ideological "answers" to what we call "the drug problem" will remain expedients incapable of any radical auto-justification. We're back to where we began, back to the problem of the criteria of competence and the impossibility of any theorem. The responsibilities that anyone (and first and foremost the "decision maker"—the legislator, educator, citizen in general, and so forth) must take in such an emergency are only all the more serious, difficult, and ineluctable. Depending on the circumstances (tirelessly analyzed, whether macroscopically or microscopically) the discourse of "interdiction" can be justified just as well or just as badly as the liberal discourse. Repressive practice (in all its brutal or sophisticated, punitive or re-educational forms) can be justified just as well or just as badly as permissive practice (with all its ruses). Since it is impossible to justify absolutely either the one or the other of these practices, one can never absolutely condemn them. In an emergency, this can only lead to equivocations, negotiations, and unstable compromises. And in any given, progressively evolving situation, these will need to be guided by a concern for the singularity of each individual experience and by a socio-political analysis that is at once broadly and as finely-tuned as possible.
This "state of affairs," this equivocation of discourses incapable of any radical justification, this is just what we observe both in the customs and in the discourses that now dominate our society. The only attitude (the only politics—judicial, medical, pedagogical, and so forth) I would absolutely condemn is one which, directly or indirectly, cuts off the possibility of an essentially interminable questioning, that is, an effective and thus transforming questioning.By effective and transforming questioning I mean, of course, the work of analysis (in every sense, from psychoanalysis to the socio-economico-political study of the conditions of drug addiction: unemployment, the geopolitics of the marketplace, the "real" condition of what we call democracy, the police, the state of criminal law and of medical institutions, and so forth), but also a thoughtful reflection of the axioms of this problematic and on all those discourses that inform it.
— Jacques Derrida, "The Rhetoric of Drugs"
5. [Son of Saul (2015), first published 19/08/2020]
[D]ebates around passivity and “sheep-like” obedience have dominated discussions of the Nazi holocaust. . . . Of those who were able to survive abduction, transport, and arrival in the camps, a deftly-designed universe of extreme demoralization, physical duress, and social alienation awaited them. The camps were “designed to break the will of the inmate”, to “shatter the adversaries’ capacity to resist”, and as one survivor of Auschwitz wrote: “it would have been impossible to create worse conditions for resistance, a more perverse and brutal system.” The camps were so ordered against resistance that merely to lift one’s hand in defense of an incoming blow was considered a grievous act of defiance, worthy of torturous execution. Nazi methodology was deftly crafted to reduce humans to sheep-like creatures, an experiment most explicitly pursued in their laboratories where scientists busied themselves with the task of physically rendering Jews into a race of sterile, “animal-like creatures who would be adapted solely for work”. Though these experiments largely failed (with grisly results), the broader experiment in the camps of creating the conditions for absolute subjugation was disturbingly successful.
So successful were these techniques that even in the most aggravating circumstances imaginable, people often found themselves totally incapable of resistance. The totality of this subjugation is conveyed in the crushing testimonies of those who experienced it: Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel listened to his own father cry out for him while being beaten to death, yet was unable to muster a response. Filip Müller painfully watched as 4,000 Auschwitz inmates knowingly walked into the gas chambers despite the prolonged efforts of some to agitate them into resistance. Tadeusz Borowski recalls working alongside 10,000 workers when a truck full of naked women slowly rolled by calling out for help: “‘Save us! We are going to the gas chambers! Save us!’... Not one of us made a move, not one of us lifted a hand.” These testimonies are powerful gestures towards the depravity of the “concentration universe” and the extent to which it violently precluded the potential for defiance. These are not stories of individual passivity — they are stories of systematic disempowerment.
— Serafinski, Blessed is the Flame: An Introduction to Concentration Camp Resistance and Anarcho-Nihilism
6. [Cold Eyes (2013), first published 25/08/2020]
Two ways of seeing: the synoptic and the holistic. The former is the so-called [“view from nowhere,”] "god's eye view," the big picture. The latter is the aggregate of all perspectives, with every view inseparable from the whole, understood as such. In the former, the observer is above the trees, sees it as a forest. In the latter, the observer are the trees. These need not be understood as oppositional methods of seeing, but as complementary in maintaining the panopticon of images.
Light, eyes, memories, all intertwine into a thread of violence that pierces into every willing participant. The needle that kills is the ink that unceasingly inscribes every movement, every turn, every consequence. The clenched fist of murder is the skill to decide beyond rules, beyond even the decision itself. The clinical lens of crime is the discriminating faculty of judgment, the bloody bestowal of a moral narrative unto the archive.
Technology (as τέχνη) is only as good as the technician.
Two ways of seeing: the synoptic and the holistic. The former is the so-called [“view from nowhere,”] "god's eye view," the big picture. The latter is the aggregate of all perspectives, with every view inseparable from the whole, understood as such. In the former, the observer is above the trees, sees it as a forest. In the latter, the observer are the trees. These need not be understood as oppositional methods of seeing, but as complementary in maintaining the panopticon of images.
Light, eyes, memories, all intertwine into a thread of violence that pierces into every willing participant. The needle that kills is the ink that unceasingly inscribes every movement, every turn, every consequence. The clenched fist of murder is the skill to decide beyond rules, beyond even the decision itself. The clinical lens of crime is the discriminating faculty of judgment, the bloody bestowal of a moral narrative unto the archive.
Technology (as τέχνη) is only as good as the technician.
7. [Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance (1974), first published 01/09/2020]
Bakunin, the lumpenproletariat, the spectre as plague. Special bodies of armed men, the Yasukuni Shrine, propaganda of the deed.
The individualist ideology has run its course. True revolution (as event, not as mere calculation of a metaphysical dialectic) cannot come about under the auspices of individualism.
The battlefield of shared premises is where one can drink water in the same pond as a hired assassin bleeds to death.
The purity of the state is perpetual self-immolation.
Bakunin, the lumpenproletariat, the spectre as plague. Special bodies of armed men, the Yasukuni Shrine, propaganda of the deed.
The individualist ideology has run its course. True revolution (as event, not as mere calculation of a metaphysical dialectic) cannot come about under the auspices of individualism.
The battlefield of shared premises is where one can drink water in the same pond as a hired assassin bleeds to death.
The purity of the state is perpetual self-immolation.
8. [The Next Three Days (2010), first published 06/09/2020]
"So, The Life and Times of Don Quixote. What is it about?"
"That someone's belief in virtue is more important than virtue itself?"
"Yes, that's in there. But what is it about? Could it be about how rational thought destroys your soul? Could it be about the triumph of irrationality and the power that's in that? You know, we spend a lot of time trying to organize the world. We build clocks and calendars, and we try and predict the weather. But what part of our life is truly under our control? What if we choose to exist purely in a reality of our own making? Does that render us insane? And if it does, isn't that better than a life of despair?"
9. [BuyBust (2018), first published 07/09/2020]
The Raid: Decimation. There are no stairs for them to ascend to or descend from, for their arena is one of constant falling. A no-holds-barred plunge into the murky pit that is the war on drugs.
The slums: the roof that shelters the destitute, the disadvantaged, the rejects. Syringes litter the dining table, holy symbols (be it religious or national) are bloodied by acts of self-preservation, a child wields a hammer. The cornucopia of vice, of contraband, of tasteless music. This is the arena of that extensive massacre, scores of dead bodies, strewed across that amalgam of progressive ideals and decrepit housing that I call home. This is a definite reflection (oh, but one of many!) of a country, whose president and his policies of spectacle does not represent the interests of its peoples. (An illusion [that is] ought to be dispelled: there never was a place for Duterte to fall from, where one can say that he "no longer" represents the people “now,” as "opposed" to "when he did." There is no such thing, there was no such time.)
A war of all against all under the veneer of maintaining health and discipline: this is the war on drugs. It is a war where, in the eyes of the police, everyone is an unlawful combatant. It is a war where, in what a limited representation represents, silence is equivocated with consent. This is the Filipino Weltanschauung taken to [its extremes]. Everyone is suspicious for everyone acts for self-interest's sake. Everything teeters on the edge of everything.
And the bloody core of it all: capital. Now reduced to bare existence, the lumpenproletariat becomes the material of profit, the ground on which the cycle of violence and privilege stands upon. The central mechanism is one of autophagy, that cloaked standard in which the success of police operations is "measured" against.
Yet, despite it all, the will [to escape] lives on. It [may] reside in only a single person, but that person can fire the bullet that invokes change. A bullet that must necessarily be bitten, for no future comes necessarily certain. A future that is just. No law can truly and fully circumscribe such justice. Now, that all laws are now pillars that harbor crime and greed, everything must burst asunder in the flames of justice.
The Raid: Decimation. There are no stairs for them to ascend to or descend from, for their arena is one of constant falling. A no-holds-barred plunge into the murky pit that is the war on drugs.
The slums: the roof that shelters the destitute, the disadvantaged, the rejects. Syringes litter the dining table, holy symbols (be it religious or national) are bloodied by acts of self-preservation, a child wields a hammer. The cornucopia of vice, of contraband, of tasteless music. This is the arena of that extensive massacre, scores of dead bodies, strewed across that amalgam of progressive ideals and decrepit housing that I call home. This is a definite reflection (oh, but one of many!) of a country, whose president and his policies of spectacle does not represent the interests of its peoples. (An illusion [that is] ought to be dispelled: there never was a place for Duterte to fall from, where one can say that he "no longer" represents the people “now,” as "opposed" to "when he did." There is no such thing, there was no such time.)
A war of all against all under the veneer of maintaining health and discipline: this is the war on drugs. It is a war where, in the eyes of the police, everyone is an unlawful combatant. It is a war where, in what a limited representation represents, silence is equivocated with consent. This is the Filipino Weltanschauung taken to [its extremes]. Everyone is suspicious for everyone acts for self-interest's sake. Everything teeters on the edge of everything.
And the bloody core of it all: capital. Now reduced to bare existence, the lumpenproletariat becomes the material of profit, the ground on which the cycle of violence and privilege stands upon. The central mechanism is one of autophagy, that cloaked standard in which the success of police operations is "measured" against.
Yet, despite it all, the will [to escape] lives on. It [may] reside in only a single person, but that person can fire the bullet that invokes change. A bullet that must necessarily be bitten, for no future comes necessarily certain. A future that is just. No law can truly and fully circumscribe such justice. Now, that all laws are now pillars that harbor crime and greed, everything must burst asunder in the flames of justice.
10. [The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012), first published 08/09/2020]
The first step to freedom is not just to change reality to fit your dreams, it's to change the way you dream.
11. [Concerning Violence (2014), first published 31/10/2020]
Unacknowledged Hiroshimas over against sentimentalized 9/11s.
12. [Being in the World (2009), first published 10/11/2020]
A very accessible introduction to the thought of Martin Heidegger, albeit with an American inflection (for better or worse). As much as existential phenomenology demonstrates that the truth of existence lies within the ebb and flow of everyday life, it sounds as though the language of everyday life itself is inadequate to express this truth, such that the gravitas of this discovery (Heidegger's "breakthrough") [remains unintelligible] — [as it continues to be], as this documentary itself is an instance of such misunderstanding, or rather an insufficient appropriation. By this, I mean what Reiner Schürmann has called "the common view": [the supposition] that Heidegger sought to "renew our understanding of the human subject not through 'existentialist' descriptions, nor through 'anthropological' findings, but through a re-articulation of the relation between man and the world. To state it simply: Dasein means that man cannot be understood without his world, and correlatively that the world is always man's world" (Critchley and Schürmann, On Heidegger's Being and Time, p. 57). This is "certainly not wrong," Schürmann continues, but this doesn't exhaust Heidegger's thought, nor is this even the primary objective of Being and Time.
One of the aspects of Heidegger's thought that relates to this documentary's paratext, is what he termed Verfallen, and it is one that hounds (and haunts) this entire endeavour: that, in articulating the phenomenological insight in everyday language, one risks restating commonsensical platitudes that are ensnared by the specific determination of being currently in reign (the technological understanding), such that the very insight you might wish to express becomes lost in transmission. Because of this, one can be compelled to alienate one's words and twist it with metaphors (as the Jena Romanticists did), contradictions (as the Tao Te Ching did), or tortuous construction of sentences (as Heidegger himself [later], Derrida, and Levinas did).
Simply put, the intuitive really just can't be fully reduced to the discursive. What? That.
Section 12, The Technological Understanding of Being, is real potent stuff. This aspect of Heidegger's thought is criminally underappreciated, and I wish more people are aware of the ramifications of technology and to start resisting its seductions. (Transcend technology? That's even better.) I recommend starting with "The Question Concerning Technology" lecture. Actually, no — start with Gunkel and Taylor's Heidegger and the Media instead, and read QCT beside it. Diving headfirst into Heidegger is a very bad idea, however appealing he might be.
One of the aspects of Heidegger's thought that relates to this documentary's paratext, is what he termed Verfallen, and it is one that hounds (and haunts) this entire endeavour: that, in articulating the phenomenological insight in everyday language, one risks restating commonsensical platitudes that are ensnared by the specific determination of being currently in reign (the technological understanding), such that the very insight you might wish to express becomes lost in transmission. Because of this, one can be compelled to alienate one's words and twist it with metaphors (as the Jena Romanticists did), contradictions (as the Tao Te Ching did), or tortuous construction of sentences (as Heidegger himself [later], Derrida, and Levinas did).
Simply put, the intuitive really just can't be fully reduced to the discursive. What? That.
Section 12, The Technological Understanding of Being, is real potent stuff. This aspect of Heidegger's thought is criminally underappreciated, and I wish more people are aware of the ramifications of technology and to start resisting its seductions. (Transcend technology? That's even better.) I recommend starting with "The Question Concerning Technology" lecture. Actually, no — start with Gunkel and Taylor's Heidegger and the Media instead, and read QCT beside it. Diving headfirst into Heidegger is a very bad idea, however appealing he might be.
13. [Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010), first published 25/11/2020]
He's kind of the rightful heir to Andy Warhol, in a way. Andy Warhol made a famous statement by repeating famous icons until they became meaningless, but he was extremely iconic in the way that he did it. But then Thierry really made them meaningless.Hegel was right. Art truly is dead, covered in fake Danganronpa blood. And I'm all for it.
14. [Tenet (2020), first published 06/12/2020]
Nolan at his most bare-bones, filmmaking reduced to formalism in the negative and destructive sense. Soulless and vapid, enjoyable only to the extent of tracing the end of this red string of fate — or "reality," as Neil termed it, alongside a metaphysical statement that discloses also the film's ideological stance. I'd rather die in a labyrinth with no walls, rather than [expend] my energy navigating a tesseract-shaped one.
Nolan at his most bare-bones, filmmaking reduced to formalism in the negative and destructive sense. Soulless and vapid, enjoyable only to the extent of tracing the end of this red string of fate — or "reality," as Neil termed it, alongside a metaphysical statement that discloses also the film's ideological stance. I'd rather die in a labyrinth with no walls, rather than [expend] my energy navigating a tesseract-shaped one.
15. [Traffickers (2012), first published 12/12/2020]
This is Philippa Foot's Tenet, and Tenet themselves are the bad guys. This and Tenet are analogous in both form and intent; both also possess a pitch-black heart. However many twists and turns a single individual throws to the machine, it will always find a way to set itself back up. It's all part of the plan. Everything is for sale, because nothing can be understood outside of the language of capital. Business ethics is [an] oxymoron [made only possible by the absurd conditions of the present conjuncture].
(And, once again, the individualist pursuit of justice fails.)
This is Philippa Foot's Tenet, and Tenet themselves are the bad guys. This and Tenet are analogous in both form and intent; both also possess a pitch-black heart. However many twists and turns a single individual throws to the machine, it will always find a way to set itself back up. It's all part of the plan. Everything is for sale, because nothing can be understood outside of the language of capital. Business ethics is [an] oxymoron [made only possible by the absurd conditions of the present conjuncture].
(And, once again, the individualist pursuit of justice fails.)
17. [Wolfwalkers (2020), first published 07/01/2021]
Nature not as sublime, but as intimate, complementary to the self, whose separation leads not to order but self-destruction (and these latter two are demonstrated to be linked in the same way as the former pair). Proudly Dionysian, a Rousseauian ode to freedom.
19. [Derrida (2002), first published 19/01/2021]
I take irony seriously.
20. [A Bittersweet Life (2005), first published 21/01/2021]
Lives lived outside reason end unerringly in bloodshed. Nothing signals fatal hubris more than seizing the law by the neck and brandishing it as a revolver, calling yourself "just" and "moral." Buddhism as manifestation of the bad infinity.
Lives lived outside reason end unerringly in bloodshed. Nothing signals fatal hubris more than seizing the law by the neck and brandishing it as a revolver, calling yourself "just" and "moral." Buddhism as manifestation of the bad infinity.
21. [Jinxes (2018), first published 22/01/2021]
An ordinary Japanese high school girl faces her biggest challenge yet!
(Why is it always the biggest challenge? Why is there no shred of historicity in the face of these characters?)
Certain death and doom will follow if she fails even a single task!
(Why is it always death that drives narrative conflict? Why are the stakes always high?)
The fate of everything she loves hang in the balance!
(Why must we take such exaggeration seriously when, deep down, it's all just child's play?)
An ordinary Japanese high school girl faces her biggest challenge yet!
(Why is it always the biggest challenge? Why is there no shred of historicity in the face of these characters?)
Certain death and doom will follow if she fails even a single task!
(Why is it always death that drives narrative conflict? Why are the stakes always high?)
The fate of everything she loves hang in the balance!
(Why must we take such exaggeration seriously when, deep down, it's all just child's play?)
22. [Re:Creators (2017), first published 23/01/2021]
Alexius Meinong's Battle Royale.
Alexius Meinong's Battle Royale.
23. [John Denver Trending (2019), first published 29/01/2021]
Pamakong Makabayan
Patriotic Hammer of the Republic of the Philippines
Iniibig ko ang Pilipinas, aking lupang hinulugan
I love the Philippines, the land that I am thrown
Kadena ng aking lahi, nilulunod kami at pinagmamalupitan para
Chain of my people, drowning us and abused into
Maging maamo, masunurin, at mapanghusga.
A meek, docile, and [prejudiced] lot.
Dahil bilanggo ako ng Pilipinas,
Because I am a prisoner of the Philippines,
Diringgin ko ang utos ng mga awtoridad
I will obey the orders of the authorities
Susundin ko ang tuntunin ng batas, kahit na ito ay mali
I will follow the rule of law, even when I know it is wrong
Ipapasan ko ang mga pasakit ng isang lipunang api,
I will shoulder the hardships of a people battered,
Binugbog, niloko, at pina-ikot, nang may buong katahimikan.
Beaten, deceived, and exploited, with utter silence.
Iaalay ko ang aking dugo, pawis, at diwa
I will offer my blood, sweat, and spirit
Sa isang bansang hindi ako kinikilala, hindi ko kinikilala, at kailan man ay hindi ko kikilalanin.
To a country that has never recognized me, that I never recognized, and that I will never honor.
Patriotic Hammer of the Republic of the Philippines
Iniibig ko ang Pilipinas, aking lupang hinulugan
I love the Philippines, the land that I am thrown
Kadena ng aking lahi, nilulunod kami at pinagmamalupitan para
Chain of my people, drowning us and abused into
Maging maamo, masunurin, at mapanghusga.
A meek, docile, and [prejudiced] lot.
Dahil bilanggo ako ng Pilipinas,
Because I am a prisoner of the Philippines,
Diringgin ko ang utos ng mga awtoridad
I will obey the orders of the authorities
Susundin ko ang tuntunin ng batas, kahit na ito ay mali
I will follow the rule of law, even when I know it is wrong
Ipapasan ko ang mga pasakit ng isang lipunang api,
I will shoulder the hardships of a people battered,
Binugbog, niloko, at pina-ikot, nang may buong katahimikan.
Beaten, deceived, and exploited, with utter silence.
Iaalay ko ang aking dugo, pawis, at diwa
I will offer my blood, sweat, and spirit
Sa isang bansang hindi ako kinikilala, hindi ko kinikilala, at kailan man ay hindi ko kikilalanin.
To a country that has never recognized me, that I never recognized, and that I will never honor.
24. [The Attorney (2013), first published 02/02/2021]
[…] A further admission on my side is that the crusade of the protagonist, while really admirable, is ultimately flawed from the start, and it's honestly frustrating how he didn't realize it. Using the process of law against itself doesn't cause it to adjust itself to the right course (whatever that means), but only serves to legitimate the law further, whether by means of the protagonist's efforts himself or the positive definition that the state endows it — and by this, I mean police power and military violence. It low-key felt frustrating watching this in the backdrop of the de-facto martial law that my country is under, seeing the same events repeat under new jargon, old motives, old money. The people is not the state, the people are the people. This may sound tautological, but this bears insisting in the face of unquestioned representationalism that is the seed of ever-sprouting fascism that haunts our world today... in the winter of nations.
[…] A further admission on my side is that the crusade of the protagonist, while really admirable, is ultimately flawed from the start, and it's honestly frustrating how he didn't realize it. Using the process of law against itself doesn't cause it to adjust itself to the right course (whatever that means), but only serves to legitimate the law further, whether by means of the protagonist's efforts himself or the positive definition that the state endows it — and by this, I mean police power and military violence. It low-key felt frustrating watching this in the backdrop of the de-facto martial law that my country is under, seeing the same events repeat under new jargon, old motives, old money. The people is not the state, the people are the people. This may sound tautological, but this bears insisting in the face of unquestioned representationalism that is the seed of ever-sprouting fascism that haunts our world today... in the winter of nations.
26. [Can't Get You Out of My Head (2021), first published 24/02/2021]
a.k.a. the dream of the red chamber
a markedly different tone is at work in this third part of curtis's series, a tone qualitatively different from the previous episodes and, i think, previous presentations, a more pronounced and palpable despair in the form, with its subjects relatively more disjointed from one another.
our dreams of the future crumbled in the wake of individualism and superficial holism. under this ideology, we deserve our oblivion (or that this "just desserts" is intelligible only through it, the only remaining telos that is left open by the market, and even then there are products offered to feed this nihilism).
a.k.a. the dream of the red chamber
a markedly different tone is at work in this third part of curtis's series, a tone qualitatively different from the previous episodes and, i think, previous presentations, a more pronounced and palpable despair in the form, with its subjects relatively more disjointed from one another.
our dreams of the future crumbled in the wake of individualism and superficial holism. under this ideology, we deserve our oblivion (or that this "just desserts" is intelligible only through it, the only remaining telos that is left open by the market, and even then there are products offered to feed this nihilism).
as much as i adore his style, it is here, i think, that a glaring lack is apparent, that curtis's analyses are blind to the material conditions that makes possible these events to occur, of how ideology can be propagated through these machines, by virtue of being utilized and utilizable (a criterion mired in ideology, ofc) only through ideology -- a relation of "if and only if." his analyses, i assert, are vulnerable to the same criticisms he's throwing on the "old systems of power" (a phrase raised to an almost-technical usage), of locking its audience to an inescapable path.
and [what’s the deal with] power? what is it? i am not aware if either foucault or nietzsche sufficiently defined power in their writings (or if, like curtis, only pointed out the places in which it is present in its force and intent), but the question i have for adam curtis is how can he justify talking about "power" as if it's a definite, discrete, clear (almost atemporal and ahistorical) presence, even though at the same time he refers to power as diffused and dissimulated in the minds of the masses? if we suppose that this is so, how does he justify it? if power stays always, doesn't it mean it has a means of "immortality," and what is this immortality if not heredity? a heredity that is a sanguinity rising to infect concepts, psyches, technics? (and what if this sanguinity is not a something that is separate from the latter, but is their precondition?)
aren't concepts technology too?
and [what’s the deal with] power? what is it? i am not aware if either foucault or nietzsche sufficiently defined power in their writings (or if, like curtis, only pointed out the places in which it is present in its force and intent), but the question i have for adam curtis is how can he justify talking about "power" as if it's a definite, discrete, clear (almost atemporal and ahistorical) presence, even though at the same time he refers to power as diffused and dissimulated in the minds of the masses? if we suppose that this is so, how does he justify it? if power stays always, doesn't it mean it has a means of "immortality," and what is this immortality if not heredity? a heredity that is a sanguinity rising to infect concepts, psyches, technics? (and what if this sanguinity is not a something that is separate from the latter, but is their precondition?)
aren't concepts technology too?
"i'm going to blow up your world."
"...when despair is deep enough, even death is pointless."
"i did not possess you, but i can blow up history."
27. [Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021), first published 13/06/2021]
Spirals are cool, that Romantic philosophical image. Some blockheads obsess over the image of the circle, the prominent examples being Heidegger's hermeneutic circle and Hegel's notion of the encyclopedia. While it is true that it is always the same problems that plague philosophical inquiry, what is not true is the presumption that we can't advance past the old methods of grasping these problems. The circle moves. This movement is often mistakably understood by most blockheads as a forward march of progress. This quasi-religious belief is, I think, patently false; the current state of affairs, I hope, demonstrate this. We think of this because we human beings are permanently stuck facing forward, like prisoners in Plato's cave. We can change where we look, but we're stuck all the same. We feel the haptic rush of history on our skin, but we can never predict which direction we're going; falling and rising are all the same to the ones on the air. This does not mean, however, that we have no point of reference to where we're heading, or think we're heading. History has never failed us in its role as advisor; only we have failed, time and again, in heeding its warnings. We can become a part of history only by enacting it, of clearing the path towards which we aim, whether it be upwards or downwards. But first, the horizontal line must be broken, that symbol of order, stability, customary, sedentary. The polyvalence of historical causes, in its infinite capacity for surprise, always pave the way for the movement of the spiral.
Spirals are cool, that Romantic philosophical image. Some blockheads obsess over the image of the circle, the prominent examples being Heidegger's hermeneutic circle and Hegel's notion of the encyclopedia. While it is true that it is always the same problems that plague philosophical inquiry, what is not true is the presumption that we can't advance past the old methods of grasping these problems. The circle moves. This movement is often mistakably understood by most blockheads as a forward march of progress. This quasi-religious belief is, I think, patently false; the current state of affairs, I hope, demonstrate this. We think of this because we human beings are permanently stuck facing forward, like prisoners in Plato's cave. We can change where we look, but we're stuck all the same. We feel the haptic rush of history on our skin, but we can never predict which direction we're going; falling and rising are all the same to the ones on the air. This does not mean, however, that we have no point of reference to where we're heading, or think we're heading. History has never failed us in its role as advisor; only we have failed, time and again, in heeding its warnings. We can become a part of history only by enacting it, of clearing the path towards which we aim, whether it be upwards or downwards. But first, the horizontal line must be broken, that symbol of order, stability, customary, sedentary. The polyvalence of historical causes, in its infinite capacity for surprise, always pave the way for the movement of the spiral.
28. [John Doe: Vigilante (2014), first published 19/06/2021]
One of the most curious things about this film are the cameras. The cameras are deeply embedded in the narrative, enables it even. How does it happen that the characters in this film are compelled to record their every single action and make it available for potential broadcast to the world? One could point out that this implies the complicity of the audience into the spectacle of violence the film presents. One could also argue from a meta-textual perspective that without their footage, the film would not have a reason to exist. This is, in a sense, correct. However, this only shifts the weight of the question, which then becomes: Why is the film taking great lengths to be grounded in reality? Perhaps it's an overt artistic choice, a certain kind of activism or a mode of argument (and maybe it is). This effort to be grounded in reality, I think, clashes with the grandiose leaps the narrative takes to communicate its point across, the cartoonish portrayal of the system it claims to understand fully, the simplistic analytic implicit in its images. Grandiose, in the sense of the weight and participation the film takes its subject matter to have; cartoonish, in its methods for revolution is one of the most naïve kind of nihilism; simplistic, in its gestures toward socio-political commentary is much uninformed in its [analysis of] the justice system. I take it that this opposition, between the rhetoric and its content, is symptomatic of the ideology it unwittingly enables, for the question it refuses to ask is: What is evil, and why are most of its practitioners rich people (and all, both victims and perpetrators, are products of the same system)? The nature of evil is only presupposed, understood only in its doxastic immediacy, and this understanding blossoms into two modes of moralism. One insurrectionary, the other politically correct, yet both are blind to the ground on which they stand on. These graying shades of moralism renders the inquiry into the nature of evil into an immobile circle. Only the teleological suspension of the ethical (and, make no mistake, this is a phenomenological suspension) can negate this inertia and [make it] regain its mobile force.
One of the most curious things about this film are the cameras. The cameras are deeply embedded in the narrative, enables it even. How does it happen that the characters in this film are compelled to record their every single action and make it available for potential broadcast to the world? One could point out that this implies the complicity of the audience into the spectacle of violence the film presents. One could also argue from a meta-textual perspective that without their footage, the film would not have a reason to exist. This is, in a sense, correct. However, this only shifts the weight of the question, which then becomes: Why is the film taking great lengths to be grounded in reality? Perhaps it's an overt artistic choice, a certain kind of activism or a mode of argument (and maybe it is). This effort to be grounded in reality, I think, clashes with the grandiose leaps the narrative takes to communicate its point across, the cartoonish portrayal of the system it claims to understand fully, the simplistic analytic implicit in its images. Grandiose, in the sense of the weight and participation the film takes its subject matter to have; cartoonish, in its methods for revolution is one of the most naïve kind of nihilism; simplistic, in its gestures toward socio-political commentary is much uninformed in its [analysis of] the justice system. I take it that this opposition, between the rhetoric and its content, is symptomatic of the ideology it unwittingly enables, for the question it refuses to ask is: What is evil, and why are most of its practitioners rich people (and all, both victims and perpetrators, are products of the same system)? The nature of evil is only presupposed, understood only in its doxastic immediacy, and this understanding blossoms into two modes of moralism. One insurrectionary, the other politically correct, yet both are blind to the ground on which they stand on. These graying shades of moralism renders the inquiry into the nature of evil into an immobile circle. Only the teleological suspension of the ethical (and, make no mistake, this is a phenomenological suspension) can negate this inertia and [make it] regain its mobile force.
29. [We Demand Tomorrow (2020), first published 11/05/2021]
A hope that is not a call to action is no hope at all; it is complacency and defeatism at the face of impending annihilation under the rotting system that is capitalism.
A hope that is not a call to action is no hope at all; it is complacency and defeatism at the face of impending annihilation under the rotting system that is capitalism.
Our demands are humble: we want only the earth.
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Actual Acorn
are you still alive?
Yeah, I just have a lot of stuff on my plate right now (and my access to the Internet is limited atm).
by Red Monaca; ; Report