From: dionysus-AT-bway.net
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 17:04:46 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: Educational Practice & Nomad Philosophy


>Which Ferrara, THE ADDICTION? BODY SNATCHERS?
>        And Cronenberg is the place to go.
>
>On Wed, 9 Oct 1996, Jay Schwartz wrote:
>
>> Abel Ferrera is slicker and far more desensitizing than Tarrantino - try
>> David Cronenberg or George Romero by way of Steve Shaviro's Deleuzian
>> treatment of film/violence/pleasure in The Cinematic Body (Univ.
>> Minnesota Press.)
>>
>> Jay Schwartz
>>
Croneneberg might be the way to go for those raised on video games, and
Tarantino might be the way to go for those raised on indie rock and rap,
but if you want to understand Bataille and Nietzsche on (non)violence -
which is where this discussion began - Ferarra is the way to go. From
Driller Killer to Bad Lieutenant, Dangerous Game, and The Addiction, the
issue is human drive. Bataille and Lacan couldn't have been more pleased.
Castration is explored as a solution to impending psychosis in modern life,
but it never succeeds. Neither does addiction. As to whether these
characters are saved before they are destroyed is open. As to whether the
culmination is dionysus or the crucified is similarly indeterminant. But
these are ethical (in Lacan's sense) explorations. (Tarantino's is a
batchelor ethic like Baudrillard's).

In a sense, American Psycho (a similarly crucial - and ethical - book for
our time) doesn't need to be made into a film, since Ferarra's already done
it. No doubt the actual film will miss the whole point.