The lion in winter 1968
Up in the Air (2010). It's true, listen:
How much does your life weigh? Imagine for a second that you're carrying a backpack. I want you to pack it with all the stuff that you have in your life... you start with the little things. The shelves, the drawers, the knickknacks, then you start adding larger stuff. Clothes, tabletop appliances, lamps, your TV... the backpack should be getting pretty heavy now. You go bigger. Your couch, your car, your home... I want you to stuff it all into that backpack. Now I want you to fill it with people. Start with casual acquaintances, friends of friends, folks around the office... and then you move into the people you trust with your most intimate secrets. Your brothers, your sisters, your children, your parents and finally your husband, your wife, your boyfriend, your girlfriend. You get them into that backpack, feel the weight of that bag. Make no mistake your relationships are the heaviest components in your life. All those negotiations and arguments and secrets, the compromises. The slower we move the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other to live symbiotically over a lifetime. Star crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We are not swans. We are sharks.
It makes no difference, there is a juvenile obsession with trying to prove that various people whether real or fictitious are homosexual. I have just re-read the passage concerned for the seventh or eighth time and there is nothing, repeat nothing, to suggest any sexual connotation in it : unless, that is, you want to read into it something that isn't there. This fixation is even extended to the spark notes cartoon video in which both Mr. McKee and Nick Carraway are shown in their underwear in McKee's bedroom, when the book mentions only that McKee is in this state of undress as he drunkenly refers to his book of photos before presumably going to sleep, which is what men often do when they have had too much alcohol. Moreover, the aforementioned video says that Nick is in love with Gatsby whereas at no point in the story is this suggested. If anyone wants to promote homosexuality, I wish they wouldn't sully great writing in the attempt.
Last edited by Emil Miller; 01-31-2012 at 05:29 PM.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
The Seventh Seal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT2qRdffNik
There is hope, but not for us.
Even though I don't like them, Terence Malick's films usually have beautiful scripts, especially some of the monologues.
"People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say." - Kurt Vonnegut
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
Last edited by Emil Miller; 01-31-2012 at 07:22 PM.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
Yes...Who knows what sort of dreadful consequences may arise if people started to interpret literature in ways that go beyond the narrow confines of what the author consciously intended? People might, dare I say, begin to develop an imagination! Or start to perceive things in ways that are personally relevant and add exponentially to their enjoyment of the work! It could be horrific! Ghastly!
Great literature, after all, only has one meaning that cannot and should not EVER be expanded upon in any way or left open to unorthodox interpretation.
I didn't say that the elevator/bedroom scene was homosexual, but everybody knows the existence of that interpretation.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.