11/04/2003 9:25:00 AM

APHORISMS OF ORDER & GOOD GOVERNMENT, # 12

"Ultimately, people will tell what they did and do as they're told."

posted by "ray_of_darkness"

11/04/2003 12:01:00 AM

CAUSES AND EFFECT

Mrs Van Ganst wrote: "Several generations of left-wing intellectuals have assured me that God is a fiction. And while I may pay lip service to the ideology of the Christian Right (Christian morals and bigotry still have a certain power to manipulate the small people of the nation to the advantage of my class, after all), in my heart I know there is no life after this life, no reward, no punishment. And this privileged life of mine is short! I would be a fool not to live it entirely for my own pleasure and amusement. Therefore, with no fear of Hell or the hope of Heaven, why should I do good for unfortunate people I will never have to see? Because it will make me feel good? Please! My wealth can buy me experiences with which the momentary warmth one gets from giving cannot begin to compare. Of course I could keep giving and giving to extend that warmth, but how is that different from any of my other addictions which are cheaper, more fun, and do not require the dreary ceremonial trappings and nauseating glad-handing of charity. You might argue that giving to medical research might at least result in extending my own life, which I have already admitted I value above all else — but you and I both know that even the most optimistic hopes of medical science, should they come to pass, will only extend my last tedious years of decline. How about social responsibility? Social conscience? Noblesse oblige? Those are just the same old superstitions with the name of God scratched out. Give me a reason to give that cannot be reasoned away!"

Ray replied: "Darling, life is theater. It must be lived for effect. It simply looks better to give. But if you must play the part of an evil bitch, then do it publicly. Trample the poor in person. Steer the machinery that crushes their hovels. Burn the scant crops of impoverished farmers. Hover above the flames like a destroying angel. Leave your audience gasping. Give them something to loathe. Give them that."

Mrs Van Ganst replied with a check, but not a large one.

posted by "teague mc teague"

11/03/2003 1:25:00 PM

GRAPHOPORNY

Explanation is always advertising. The pret of interpret, the pr- (pret-yo) of praise, precious, price, ap-praise, and ap-preciate, as well as the porn of pornography, are all the same Indo-European root word meaning "to traffic in," "to sell," "to hand over," "to distribute," hence Latin pretium, "price," and Greek pernanai, "to sell," and pornë, "prostitute." To interpret is to act as a pimp of language, a drummer of ideas, a middle man, a go-between, a negotiator of price (meaning). The interpreter is a side-show barker drawing attention to the wanton goods behind a canvas wall. He engenders an appreciation, he makes a market. Pornography is not so much "pictures of prostitutes" as it is "an image/text that sells (interprets)."

posted by "ray_of_darkness"

11/03/2003 11:00:00 AM

HOMO HOMINI

Erasmus wrote: Homo homini aut deus aut lupus — Man to man is either a god or a wolf.

In fact, at our best, men are to men as dogs and wolves. By turns we bark and growl or wag and fawn. We sniff, jump and hump. Co-operative and social, we hunt in packs and share our kills. Self-interested, we bury our bones in secret solitude. We run together, we run alone. We mark our territories, turn again to our own vomit, roll in shit, follow our noses and howl at the moon to pray. (No dog is any dog's god.) In the vocabulary of dogs, faithful is not the same as "will not stray."

But when men are to men as gods, we become monsters and masters. The hunt is replaced by the slaughter. Chains come out. Collars are fastened. (In the vocabulary of gods, faithful means "cannot escape.") Ashamed, we no longer look at the moon when we pray.

posted by "ray_of_darkness"

11/03/2003 12:50:00 AM

MY FRANKENSTEIN

The first Halloween that Teague and my father were together, Teague brought a number of old horror films to the house to watch after supper that night. I was ten years old and not into trick-or-treating. Ray did not approve of candy and I had always been disturbed by the idea of wearing masks and costumes. Until that year, Halloween had been something I'd experienced in school (construction paper pumpkins, cardboard skeletons) or vicariously, on television. The actual Eve of All Hallows went uncelebrated in our house. It was Teague who insisted on doing something for the holiday. Ray limited Teague's enthusiasm to horror movies, hot buttered popcorn and a real jack-o-lantern flickering and smoking on the table. The two films we saw that Halloween night were James Whale's Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein. The movies were ancient but it was all new to me. I loved sitting snug between Ray and Teague on the couch while Boris Karloff's monster staggered and growled across the TV screen and Colin Clive chewed on the scenery as the most fragile and neurotic Frankenstein imaginable. I can't say I was frightened by what I saw, but I remember experiencing a kind of bladder-tightening nervous excitement as the two films unfolded the story of the tragic monster. I also became aware for the first time how films were structured by shots, cuts, changing camera angles and points of view. It was probably Whale's campy symbolist style that made this apparent to my ten year old mind. I began to think of camera shots as 'living pictures' — pictures where actions unfolded within the limitations of a single point of view. Years later I would write a thesis exploring the dimensional nature of the camera shot — defined as an unfolding action contained in an artificial static space defined by two vectors, camera position and the duration. It was that Halloween night when I was ten that made me a filmmaker. After that night I began to have a recurring dream based on the Frankenstein movies. This dream, in various incarnations, would haunt me for a decade, until I finally used it as the scenario for one of my first professional films, a black and white short called Prometheus produced by the Public Educational Radio Film Corporation, in which I also played the lead — one of my very few appearances as an actor in front of the camera. Prometheus contains no dialogue, only my voice-over narration in the form of a letter from Dr. Frankenstein to an unnamed person, probably his wife or fiancee. What follows here is a rough draft that served as my shooting script for the film. It also reflects all the important elements of my dream.

Prometheus, a film by P.T. Plunkett.

Exterior.

Establishing shot — A high promontory overlooking a large river valley.

Cut to —

Medium shot of a double sided icon mounted like a weather vane on a square post near the edge of the cliff. On one side, the image of Donata, a female saint. A gust of wind turns the icon to reveal a male figure on the other side, labeled St. Ignatz. A narrow ray of sunlight pierces the gray cloud cover to illuminate the icon. Close-up of the icon.

Cut to —

Establishing shot — Exterior — A villa in the mountains.

Cut to —

Interior — my laboratory.

*I am Dr. Frankenstein.

*I am assisted by Igor — not a hunchback but a handsome, well-built young man. We are both young.

*I am also assisted by an unnamed "friend" — an older man — a sinister character — deformed, bald, frog-like, with mottled skin.

*We are seen from high above, three small figures laboring among odd machinery on the floor of the laboratory.

Cut to —

Various close-ups and medium shots of the characters and details of lab.

Voice over —

"My darling, we are well advanced in our experiments to create life from death. I have animated my first creation. Alas, it is hideous — tall, looming, gaunt, with the fleshless face of a decomposing corpse, a ghastly thing, a monstrosity."

The camera trails through dark corridors and finds the dark silhouette of the monster hunched over in chains. It lurches at the camera and roars.

Voice over —

"This creature has already become an object of fear among us."

Cut to —

Medium shot an animal scurrying across the lab floor.

Cut to —

*Various shots to illustrate the description in the voice over.

Voice over —

"I have also created a smaller rat-like creature from the dead parts of small animals. It has sharp teeth, red eyes and a body that oozes blood through its fur. It is always with me. At times it will lunge and bite without provocation. I have been bitten once and am very afraid of this creature. I put it outside last month, hoping it would wander away into the forest, but in time it slipped back into the house. It seems more docile now, almost a pet. It is always with me."

Cut to —

Exterior. The villa garden seen from a height.

*The three creators at work, the monster holding up a huge torch to light the scene.

Voice over —

"Now we are building a second monster. What madness! I fear the worst. My first monster seems interested in this project and looms in the background, watching with its wet, dead eyes. Our operations take place outdoors, at night."

*From above, the slowly revolving camera finds the body of the new monster, shrouded, lying on a turf altar.

Voice over —

"The mountain air is tainted with the smell of ether and decay. When the new monster awakes, it will be in terrible pain and must be calmed with the anaesthetic."

Cut to —

Chaos. Frantic shadows and noise.

Voice over —

"Oh my dearest one — horrible failure! Everything has gone wrong. I will not record our ghastly mistake. Let silence swallow our disgrace. My precious friend is dead."

The scene unfolds as described in the voice over —

Cut to —

*Various shots, close-up of Igor ...

Voice over —

"Knowing that death was near, Igor put his face into the ether mask. Our first monster lumbered forward with a sword and cut Igor's legs out from under him. Igor died unaware of his wounds. I feel a great sense of loss."

Cut to —

Interior. My chamber.

*The deformed man hands me with a cloth bag full of twitching arms and legs.

Voice over —

"This is our method of making monsters. The individual parts must be alive and moving before they are assembled."

*I drop the bag in disgust. The limbs wriggle out on the floor. Some crawl under the bed, others under a table. I catch them and lock them in a box.

Cut to —

Interior. Subterranean. Shadows. Noises.

*The deformed man and I are moving a huge piece of apparatus mounted on large wheels on tracks in an underground chamber. Various angles. The monster is pushing the machine from the behind. The deformed man falls into the wheels. He was torn to pieces by the turning spokes before I can stop the forward motion of the machine. I climb under the apparatus and begin hurling his body parts out of the way like so much trash — legs, arms, bits of torso — his head in three pieces, blood, blood — I am soaked in blood.

Voice over —

"The deformed man died today."

Cut to —

Medium shot of me writing at desk by candlelight. Close shot of the desk top over my shoulder. Blood on my hands and on the paper.

"I am annoyed that he will not be there to assist me anymore, and I am annoyed by the mess he has made, but I am not unhappy that he is dead. I did not like his deformities. I did not trust him. I am alone with my monster now."

Cut to —

A long shot of the monster struggling in chains.

*A noise.

Cut to —

*Me opening the box to find my rat-creature curled up with the arms and legs that I had caught earlier.

Cut to —

Close-up of the interior of the box. *A nest. The animal and the limbs are all asleep, nuzzling together, quivering.

Cut to —

Exterior.

The promontory above the river valley. A narrow beam of sunlight shines on the icon of St. Ignatz. The wind turns the icon to show St. Donata.

Cut to — Close-up of the saint.

End

posted by "P.T. Plunkett"