I see that someone removed the "wife" tag from Amy Farina.
- L pour soi, Wikipedia talk page for [Ian MacKaye]
I started to write an essay about placebos and nocebos and Baader-Meinhof and quantum phenomena. This essay is going to generally be about something I believe in very strongly, which is that reality is kind of a joke and you can believe whatever you want and it’ll probably be realer than not. But I think it’s very easy to veer into seeming unhinged writing about this stuff so I want to put a little more time into it. My basic thesis is: If you accept that the placebo effect is real (and it almost definitely is), you have to take back any jokes you’ve ever made about The Secret (2006).
Also trying something avant-garde out with my music notes this week where I’m not elaborating on my initial notes.
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Movies
Burning (2018) (continued from last week)
Sociology
Alphas Are Just Your Parents
Music
* La Bella
Shotmaker
* Yaphet Kotto
* Iron Maiden
L’Rain
Movies
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Burning (2018) Part 2
This isn’t very well written and there isn’t a clear thesis but you can read this if you want:
This movie is about FREEDOM! Our day to day lives and the things that bind us. Jong-su spends the first 90% of the movie reacting to things that other people tell him about or ask him to do. He is facing a terrible economic climate and terrible wealth inequality and feels trapped. A tragedy pushes him over the edge. What happens next?
What does freedom mean for our characters? What do they WANT to do? What is their drive? Jong-su supposedly has a dream — writing — but does nothing to pursue it. He has no ideas and no motivation. Hae-mi cries and suffers for existential lack, a big dream to drive and give her purpose, while being out in the world and doing things she’s interested in - pantomime, travel. Ben, meanwhile, lives an easy, comfortable life, doing whatever he wants. He smokes marijuana without fear of the law. But he has no hunger — he is bored. He doesn’t know what to do with himself.
The larger societal pressures and themes of this movie are very similar to 2019’s Parasite, which you may have seen. Social stratification is seen and felt, there is open disdain for those further down the totem pole. It is difficult to find work and harder still to find spiritual fulfillment while having to work. Having money is seen as a means to allow you to live the life you want. Jong-su seems to dislike Ben for this perceived freedom; tension builds over this. Ben, seemingly, does not have to work, (he does “this-and-that.” In the story, he does “import/export work”) and does not have any worries, but is not happy. He squanders his economic freedom. We can imagine that Jong-su boils inside over this. If it weren’t for all of these worldly problems, like helping out around the farm and dealing with his dad’s criminal charges, maybe he would have the space to write his novel.
Hae-mi offers Jong-su some relief in this sense. She seems to be suffering worse than him — she cries over her feelings of existential dread. She lives in a tiny little apartment. He was her savior (maybe — who knows what’s true) as a child, when she fell down a well, and wants to be her savior again now, from this metaphorical well. He finds some sense of purpose, before she begins dating Ben, and Jong-su tumbles back down to earth. Eventually, her role in Jong-su’s life dwindling, she vanishes for good — and Jong-su begins to search for her, stalking Ben, looking for the one thing he had that gave him any kind of purpose. She was never a person to him as much as a pressure valve for his own feelings of meaninglessness.
I dunno, I guess what I’m kind of getting at is that this is a movie about people who are stuck and lack any ability to create. They don’t have any motivation, and they all suffer for it. Jong-su looks to others in envy and lashes out when his fantasies don’t realize themselves. He doesn’t know what to do and doesn’t put any work into making anything he wants a reality. He wants to be a writer but doesn’t write. Hae-mi is overwhelmed by her own lack of purpose, wanting a big dream to chase. Her day-to-day life is crushing and she only sees escape in fantasy. She takes up pantomime as a hobby — explicitly acting in the realm of make-believe. She is looking for purpose there. But you can’t just will purpose into your life, devoid of any attachment to reality. You have to be able to do real, tangible things to work towards your goals for them to have any meaning. Ben totally lacks any creativity, completely unable to envision creating anything. He only understands destruction (Maybe this is a stretch, but this is how Jong-su sees him). He has the access and freedom to do anything he imagines but can’t, hoping to get that from others. He wants to hear Hae-mi talk about her experiences and Jong-su to write about him. They’re all kind of circling each other but looking through each other completely, not seeing each other as human.
The movie ends really beautifully. Hae-mi has completely disappeared, living on only as a memory, as an idea. Ben dies with a smile on his face — incapable of creating anything himself, he has driven Jong-su to action. Someone else has begun to act in his stead. Jong-su, only capable of finding purpose through others, reaches a boiling point and takes action. He believes that Ben has done something to Hae-mi, has destroyed his hope and inspiration. He kills Ben and sells the only remaining cow on the farm. He has nothing left. He is naked. He will either be reborn or die.
Sociology
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Alphas Are Just Your Parents
I think a good amount of stuff that filters into conventional wisdom from psychological/sociological studies winds up being a bit less rigorously researched than you would expect. Like the Stanford Prison Experiment, every single personality quiz like Myers-Briggs, etc. Here’s a fun fact: All of the Alpha/Beta stuff based on wolf studies hasn’t been taken seriously within the scientific community for decades. It’s an outdated concept! Check it out: [link], and relevant quote:
“The adults are simply in charge because they are the parents of the rest of the pack members. We don’t talk about the alpha male, the alpha female and the beta child in a human family,” Zimmermann said.
Wolf alphas are just the parents!!!!!! Wow. And the kids leave after like, a year, and start their own families, where they are then the “alphas.” Wolf packs in general are just families, and not rag-tag groups of wolves that hang out together. There’s no competition to find out who the alpha wolf is. Incredible.
Another fun tidbit coming out of this article is that wolves are really really bad hunters when they first set out on their own because prior to that, their parents are the only ones doing any hunting, which seems kind of funny to me.
Music
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* La Bella - Ides (Emotive Hardcore)
This rules
Shotmaker - Mouse Ear [Forget-Me-Not] (Emotive Hardcore)
This was ok
Shotmaker - The Crayon Club (Emotive Hardcore)
This was ok but worse than Mouse Ear
* Yaphet Kotto - Syncopated Synthetic Laments For Love (Emotive Hardcore)
Hell yeah
* Iron Maiden - Number of The Beast (Heavy Metal)
Rock on
L’Rain - Fatigue (Experimental/Soul)
Hot off the press! This was very good,
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That’s it for this week, have a great day.