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Mar. 5th, 2019 09:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.
....
The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.
-T.S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent"
[saw this on my DW correspondence list and decided what I had to say about it -- was best suited for my own journal -- because it is directed at Eliot, not the person who posted it.]
And suddenly, I feel the need to throw lots of legal memorandum, contracts, business memos, emails, financial justifications and technical writings at Eliot. Assuming of course he's being serious and not facetious, it was never clear with Eliot. Or maybe just ram Nabokov's Palefire down his throat. (Palefire is well, part poem and part satire. And most of the action takes place in the footnotes. It's basically a fight between the poet and a scholar analyzing his work. They live across from each other in the same community and are rivals.]
Alas, despite my love of his poetry, TS Eliot, I'm sorry, was an egotistical ass. (I'd say a horse's ass, but I rather like horses.) We used to discuss his numerous transgressions, personal and otherwise on the ATPO Board back in the day, mainly because half the board was made up of frustrated English Lit, History, Classical and Philosophy majors - and one of them was a huge Eliot fan. (Can't remember his name but he compared Buffy to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. People used to get into lengthy academic debates with him, complete with footnotes.)
And his dead wrong about poetry. It's pure emotion. Want to read something unemotional? Read your lease agreement.
Speaking of literary greats...
Co-worker: I should have heeded your warning.
Me: Eh?
Co-worker: I tried to read Sound and the Fury, and you were right.
Me: That bad?
Co-worker: Yep. I couldn't get past the first ten pages. It made no sense.
Me: It's told in the perspectives of three different men, one is mentally challenged.
Co-worker: Ah that must be the first narrator. Who or what is Caddy? I thought they were playing golf and it was golf term -- but it -
Me: Caddy is their sister, who they each have different feelings about. It's.. very misogynistic in places and not worth the effort. I wrote my undergrad thesis on it and Ulysess, and while Ulysess was a celebration of womanhood and actually not that derogatory, Sound and the Fury...well, let me put it this way, Faulkner had issues with women.
Co-worker: Well that doesn't surprise me, I tried to re-watch old MASH episodes and the rape-jokes and misogyny in it -
Me: Well, to be fair to MASH, it's about the Korean War and takes place in the 1950s in the Korean War -- and is a black comedy about that WAR. Also it does have some well-developed female characters later in its run. (I also wrote a paper on MASH in undergrad. I have no interest in re-watching and seriously doubt it has held up well. ) The movie was also much worse.
Co-worker: That's true.
Me: Look, like I told you don't read something you don't enjoy -- life is too short.
There's a lot of better books out there than Sound and the Fury to read. I'd skip Faulkner. I've read two of his books and neither did much for me.
Although interesting take on MASH. I haven't watched it in a very long time. The last time I watched MASH was in the 1980s. Something tells me that it hasn't held up well.
2. Spielberg wants to disqualify films shown simultaneously on streaming channels like Netflix from being nominated for Awards
Now, Spielberg and others are planning to do something about it by supporting a revised film academy regulation at an upcoming meeting of the organization’s board of governors that would disqualify Netflix from the Oscars, or at least how the streaming giant currently operates during awards season.
This year “Roma” got a limited theatrical qualifying run and an expensive campaign with one of the industry’s most successful awards publicists, Lisa Taback, leading the charge. But Netflix, operates somewhat outside of the industry while also infiltrating its most important institutions, like the Oscars and the Motion Picture Association of America. Some like Spielberg, are worried about what that will mean for the future of movies.
“Steven feels strongly about the difference between the streaming and theatrical situation,” an Amblin spokesperson told IndieWire’s Anne Thompson late last week. “He’ll be happy if the others will join (his campaign) when that comes up. He will see what happens.”
Sigh. If it were up to me, we'd do away with the awards completely. But alas, it's not. I want Netflix to continue doing what it has being doing...mainly because I wouldn't have seen some of these films otherwise. Movies in NYC are expensive.
Also Roma was an amazing film and in my opinion was among the few that deserved the awards it received.
[I don't think highly of Spielberg -- my brother told me a few horror stories from his time working in LA in the film world. ]
3. 5 Funniest TV Shows Ever..
Hmm. I laugh at weird things.
* Buffy -- weirdly had some of the funniest moments for me.
* The Good Wife -- I thought was hilarious
* MASH -- some of the early episodes were insanely absurd
* Cheers -- also had some insane moments
* The Good Place -- uneven at times, but when it's funny -- it's really funny.
* Marvelous Mrs. Maisel made me laugh a lot.
I don't find sketch comedy funny. It just doesn't work for me. Nor do most situational slapstick style comedies.
....
The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.
-T.S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent"
[saw this on my DW correspondence list and decided what I had to say about it -- was best suited for my own journal -- because it is directed at Eliot, not the person who posted it.]
And suddenly, I feel the need to throw lots of legal memorandum, contracts, business memos, emails, financial justifications and technical writings at Eliot. Assuming of course he's being serious and not facetious, it was never clear with Eliot. Or maybe just ram Nabokov's Palefire down his throat. (Palefire is well, part poem and part satire. And most of the action takes place in the footnotes. It's basically a fight between the poet and a scholar analyzing his work. They live across from each other in the same community and are rivals.]
Alas, despite my love of his poetry, TS Eliot, I'm sorry, was an egotistical ass. (I'd say a horse's ass, but I rather like horses.) We used to discuss his numerous transgressions, personal and otherwise on the ATPO Board back in the day, mainly because half the board was made up of frustrated English Lit, History, Classical and Philosophy majors - and one of them was a huge Eliot fan. (Can't remember his name but he compared Buffy to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. People used to get into lengthy academic debates with him, complete with footnotes.)
And his dead wrong about poetry. It's pure emotion. Want to read something unemotional? Read your lease agreement.
Speaking of literary greats...
Co-worker: I should have heeded your warning.
Me: Eh?
Co-worker: I tried to read Sound and the Fury, and you were right.
Me: That bad?
Co-worker: Yep. I couldn't get past the first ten pages. It made no sense.
Me: It's told in the perspectives of three different men, one is mentally challenged.
Co-worker: Ah that must be the first narrator. Who or what is Caddy? I thought they were playing golf and it was golf term -- but it -
Me: Caddy is their sister, who they each have different feelings about. It's.. very misogynistic in places and not worth the effort. I wrote my undergrad thesis on it and Ulysess, and while Ulysess was a celebration of womanhood and actually not that derogatory, Sound and the Fury...well, let me put it this way, Faulkner had issues with women.
Co-worker: Well that doesn't surprise me, I tried to re-watch old MASH episodes and the rape-jokes and misogyny in it -
Me: Well, to be fair to MASH, it's about the Korean War and takes place in the 1950s in the Korean War -- and is a black comedy about that WAR. Also it does have some well-developed female characters later in its run. (I also wrote a paper on MASH in undergrad. I have no interest in re-watching and seriously doubt it has held up well. ) The movie was also much worse.
Co-worker: That's true.
Me: Look, like I told you don't read something you don't enjoy -- life is too short.
There's a lot of better books out there than Sound and the Fury to read. I'd skip Faulkner. I've read two of his books and neither did much for me.
Although interesting take on MASH. I haven't watched it in a very long time. The last time I watched MASH was in the 1980s. Something tells me that it hasn't held up well.
2. Spielberg wants to disqualify films shown simultaneously on streaming channels like Netflix from being nominated for Awards
Now, Spielberg and others are planning to do something about it by supporting a revised film academy regulation at an upcoming meeting of the organization’s board of governors that would disqualify Netflix from the Oscars, or at least how the streaming giant currently operates during awards season.
This year “Roma” got a limited theatrical qualifying run and an expensive campaign with one of the industry’s most successful awards publicists, Lisa Taback, leading the charge. But Netflix, operates somewhat outside of the industry while also infiltrating its most important institutions, like the Oscars and the Motion Picture Association of America. Some like Spielberg, are worried about what that will mean for the future of movies.
“Steven feels strongly about the difference between the streaming and theatrical situation,” an Amblin spokesperson told IndieWire’s Anne Thompson late last week. “He’ll be happy if the others will join (his campaign) when that comes up. He will see what happens.”
Sigh. If it were up to me, we'd do away with the awards completely. But alas, it's not. I want Netflix to continue doing what it has being doing...mainly because I wouldn't have seen some of these films otherwise. Movies in NYC are expensive.
Also Roma was an amazing film and in my opinion was among the few that deserved the awards it received.
[I don't think highly of Spielberg -- my brother told me a few horror stories from his time working in LA in the film world. ]
3. 5 Funniest TV Shows Ever..
Hmm. I laugh at weird things.
* Buffy -- weirdly had some of the funniest moments for me.
* The Good Wife -- I thought was hilarious
* MASH -- some of the early episodes were insanely absurd
* Cheers -- also had some insane moments
* The Good Place -- uneven at times, but when it's funny -- it's really funny.
* Marvelous Mrs. Maisel made me laugh a lot.
I don't find sketch comedy funny. It just doesn't work for me. Nor do most situational slapstick style comedies.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-06 09:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-07 01:41 am (UTC)Anyhow, I agree with your assessment -- having only a vague memory of it. (Haven't watched since the 1980s, when I literally watched every episode five or six times in the space of three weeks. I had to, I was writing a paper on the black comedy in MASH. I got slammed by the professor and my critic for not talking enough about the sexism and misogyny, which I was oblivious too or had justified due to the subject matter -- it was a "satirical" television series about the Korean War (1950s) in the male perspective. The theme song was "Suicide is Painless" -- I mean come on. Of course it was sexist, racist, etc -- it was satirical series about WAR - and created in the 1960s and 70s. Hello.
And I vividly remember the class two years ahead of me in high school (1983) doing their senior prom based on MASH.
The movie "MASH" was so much worse in regards to sexism -- I remember watching it and thinking, oh dear. But, it was also "satire" and released in the late 1960s, and "satire" by its very nature is blatantly offensive. Although the television series was far tamer.
There are a few isolated episodes in the early years -- that had no women in them, which were hilarious.
The latter years got more serious and targeted the war more with the comedy. Also Alda starting writing, directing and producing episodes -- so the sexism diminished a bit in the latter years. I got the feeling that he had a major influence in pushing back on it.
But so much of it is the time period -- and honestly if we look at history -- the world has been a sexist, misogynist, racist ceasepool for a million years. If you focus on it too long -- you start thinking that maybe universe should put us all out of our misery already. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2019-03-07 12:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-07 01:22 am (UTC)But considering it was a series that started in the 1960s/70s at the height of the Vietnam War, and was based on a movie about and series of satirical books about the Korean War...I think it's one of those things that you sort of have to look at within the context of the time period.
The later episodes are less sexist, actually. Hot Lips Houlihan who started out as a joke, actually becomes a well-rounded character with lots of depth by the time the series ended. Also, it depicts how the War drove people crazy and brought out the absolute worst in people.
It's really a satire about War, in line with Joseph Heller's Catch-22, which is sort of set around the same time period.
But I'm not sure it holds up well now...but I'm willing to bet money that in twenty years that shows like Buffy, the Office, etc won't either. LOL!