Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 22:26:43 -0100 From: hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net> Subject: Re: Can't buy me Love! - or Philosophy! Thanks Eric and All, Each person is victor and victim in the movie of one's life, a single, unique, life-history; a compendium of all thoughts experienced, all words heard, texts read, images seen. How much can be crammed into a two-hour movie? Apparently, Moulin Rouge encompassed enough to be entertaining, a giant mishmash of popular culture of the latter part of the century One can imagine a similar treatment of the tons of text emitted by the most-read philosophers of the same era, how they were read, re-read, mis-read. It wouldn't be entertainment, but might emphasize the destruction of the "self", the impossibility of a personal philosophy, when philosophic trends make each human mind a constantly increasing landfill of the "other". Whatever it is, its "yours", exclusive, and unbuyable. I read unfavorable reviews of Moulin Rouge, but was tempted by your description until the in the end it was compared with Titanic. regards, Hugh ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Eric wrote: > I went to see Moulin Rouge last night. It is a movie difficult to > describe. One is tempted to say it is MTV meets Carmen meets American > in Paris meets Nirvana meets 60's rebellion meets The Umbrellas of > Cherbourg meets Ballywood. It is a postmodern, multicultural musical > entertainment with a vengeance. > > According to its very humorous anachronistic dialectics, every > rebellious movement that has ever signified modernity is put into the > cultural blender and it all comes out the same. Bohemians, bobby > soxers, hippies, punk, grunge are all revealed to share an ahistorical > commonality in ways the movie reduces to ironic self-parody. It is all > so self-consciously reductionist you cannot help but laugh. > > At its core, this is a Marxist musical - Marxism lite. The plot centers > upon the conflict between Money and Love in traditional, melodramatic > ways. Who will get the girl? Will it be the poor, sincere passionate > writer (Love) or the greedy possessive Duke (Money). > > Self-aware of every cliche it evokes, the movie nonetheless pushes this > question of economic control and domination throughout in humorous ways. > It shows how the romantic idealizations favored by bohemianism with its > simple big 'honest' words like Truth, Beauty, Freedom and Love > constantly trumpeted like advertising slogans by the children of the > revolution are forever in danger of being trumped in the 'real' world by > Money. > > As the courtesans, the ladies of the evening put it: you have to sell > your love in the street in order to survive in Moulin Rouge. Money > changes everything! > > This is coupled with the insight that this foundational cash nexus > produces a Society of the Spectacle. Everything becomes performance. > This leads to a dizzying play within a play within a play structure in > which both the opening and closing scenes are literally draped with > theatre curtains. At the climax of the movie, when the heroine Satine > dies, the event occurs on stage in front of the audience who has been > watching the play. They applaud, thinking it is part of the performance. > We sit in the movie audience and watch them applaud. > > At one level, irony is the helpless gesture of one who is permitted only > to observe, lacking the power to change the ways things are. Hamlet in > a wheelchair. (or Hamm) Social realism has died out in the arts because > such a privileging of a single point of view as if it were the only > point of view possible merely evokes further parody. So, instead, jaded > souls that we are, we prefer nihilistic self-referential musicals that > leave us dizzy with a orgy of allusion before we succumb to a vertigo of > atonished delight > > Even that hoariest of all chestnuts, the Proustian cliche that this > fallen quotidian suffering may be redeemed because it can be > transfigured into Art, is slyly addressed in Moulin Rouge. At the end > of the movie, the hero sits alone, with his manuscript wallpapering the > tiny room. He types 'The End' with a flourish and the implication is he > has just told his story and by this very fact, Love has triumphed after > all. But wait - isn't this also just an obvious continuation of the > overwrought Titanic parody the movie evoked earlier? >
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