Jeg ved ikke om i havde set denne her komme, men det havde jeg ikke...
Walt Disney har netop opkøbt Georg Lucas' Lucasfilm ltd. De planlægger at udgive 3 nye Star Wars film, med den første så snart som i 2015. Mere info i følgende artikler:
Her er et kort interview med Georg Lucas om salget:
Umiddelbart befinder jeg mig nok med den gode gamle holdning der siger: Lad nu bare de film ligge som de mesterværker de er.. De 3 nye film (episode 1-3) var allerede på grænsen i forhold til de gamle klassikere, og man kunne frygte, at nye Disney film ville afmytologisere sagaen yderligere...
MEN på samme tid er det jo lidt trist at tage nej-hatten på med det samme. Kunne man ikke forestille sig Disney faktisk kan tage historien videre i en god retning, og puste lidt nyt liv i galaksen, på samme tid med de bevarer de gamles charme?
Jeg synes det er spændende om de Star Wars film, jeg er vokset op med, går en tid i møde, hvor de udvikler sig til et James Bond-format. Altså nye udgivelser med nye skuespillere etc.. Star Wars har jo allerede bjerge af bøger skrevet om tiden før, under og efter filmene, så det bliver interessant at se, hvordan Disney forholder sig til disses forløb.
Hvad tænker i? Overrasket? Glæder i jer? Synes i det er blasfemi?
Idéhistorisk analyse af "Like I Love You" af Justin Timberlake
Her er videoen fra mit foredrag om sangen "Like I Love You" af Justin Timberlake. I foredragen tegner jeg masser af paralleler til forskellige idéhistoriske elementer og skaber derudfra en tolkning af sangen, der nok vil overraske de fleste. Foredraget blev afholdt som en del af rusugen for Idéhistorie på Aarhus Universitet august 2012.
Jeg kom til at love, jeg ville lave en anmeldelse af filmen "Snow White and the Huntman", som jeg så i Cinemaxx igår. Denne anmeldelse kommer her:
Snow White and the Huntsman (IMDB) er et eventyr, og så er det sagt. Filmen kaster sig over genren med stort engagement, og blander de klassiske eventyr fænomener (tallet 3, trolde under broer, prinsesser i tårne etc.) med flotte effekter og nogle interessante plot tvists.
Lad det dog være sagt med det samme: Har du i forvejen en aversion mod Twilight-prinsessen Kristen Stewart, er dette ikke en film for dig. Hvis du mener pigebarnet lider under kun at have et enkelt ansigtsudtryk i samtlige scener, vil Snowwhite nok kun underbygge din teori. Så er det sagt.
Hvis du derimod har et mere moderat syn på Kristen Steward, eller måske er i den lejr der mener hun er den bedste/sødeste/smukkeste skuespillerinde på denne side af ækvator, er der ingen alarm. Hun klarer sig nemlig rigtig fint, og får egentlig ramt Snehvides uskyldige karakter på en måde, så den ikke bliver kvalmende. Og så burde alle kvinder i øvrigt have et sæt pladerustning liggende i gemmerne - det ser jo fremragende ud!
Det øvrige skuespil i filmen er det ikke til at sætte en pølsefinger på. Chris Hemsworth som jægeren klarer sig rigtig fint, og har et par sjove kommentarer. Der er ikke helt så mange som i Thor, men til gengæld får vi lov at se lidt flere følelser manden i denne film, hvilket ikke er dumt.
Dronningen, spillet af Charlize Theron er fremragende. Hun er betagende, dominerende og fuldstændig manisk når hun råber af folk (og det sker altså et god håndfuld gange).
Plottet kender vi jo i grove træk fra eventyret, men filmen formår at lave mange nye vinkler, og på en håndfuld steder fuldstændig at afvige fra den gamle fortælling. Dette bevirker, at man som tilskuer føler sig hjemme i historien, men alligevel ikke kan vide sig helt sikker på, hvad der lurer om hjørnet. Prinsen i fortællingen (Sam Claflin) spiller også en spøjs rolle, og der antydes et trekantsdrama mellem Snehvide, jægeren og ham selv. Dette er dog på ingen måde et drama der fylder filmen, og det er rart.
Som sagt er det en eventyrfilm der fortæller en god historie. Filmen har ikke de mest interessante enkeltpersoner, og den efterlader heller ikke ligefrem en med en susende følelse i maven, eller en skam over egne materialistiske vaner. Ser man film, for at få nye perspektiver på livet, eller for at lave psykoanalyse af hovedpersonerne, er Snowwhite nok ikke sagen. Til gengæld genskaber den den barnlige stemning af at få læst et eventyr op. Den bliver ikke kedelig, og trykker elegant på følelsesregisterets knapper med uhygge, kærlighed, glæde etc.. Som film er den meget flot skruet sammen, og effekterne er meget overbevisende.
Jeg synes også det var rart at se en middelalder film, der ikke var bange for at spare lidt realisme, til fordel for den ridderlige stil. Når parterne i filmen drager i krig, er det med lancer og store pladerustninger all the way, og det synes jeg er forfriskende.
Er filmen en tøsefilm? - Nej, men lad være med at gå alene i biffen og se den som dreng.
Er filmen for sukkersød? - Nej, men den nærmer sig til tider.
Er filmen forudsigelig? - SPOILER: De gode vinder over de onde, men ellers slet ikke.
Skal den ses i biografen? - Nej, men det det gør den godt, da det er mange flotte scener.
Kommer der en 2'er? - Ja, efter sigende er der lige blevet givet grønt lys til én film mere. Mere info her
Og så lige et clue til en måde måske at gøre filmen en kende mere underholdende. Jeg fik i hvert fald ret stor morskab ud af den slående lighed mellem Dronningens bror, og gode gamle Jespler Klein. De to ligner drabeligt meget hinanden, og det førte til en omgang GUH (grinen ud højt), da karakterens navn råbes for første gang. Men den vil jeg lade dig glæde dig til.
Smid gerne en kommentar med, hvad du syntes om filmen, eller hvis du har spørgsmål.
Do you sometimes find
yourself in a situation, where you do not know if some misfortune was
just bad luck or due to your own clumsiness? Or perhaps you are
annoyed with people blaming the goddess of luck, when in fact their
own stupidity is the cause for their current situation? Dear friend,
be concerned no more. I bring you the categorization of misfortune!
We will be working
with three types of misfortune for this schema: Stupidity, clumsiness
and bad luck. Naturally there are a lot of cases in between and we
will have a look at them, when we have dealt with the archetypes.
A. When some
misfortune is caused by stupidity it simply means, that you
could have foreseen the outcome of the act, had you only given it a
bit more thought. Example 1: I unplug an unsafe electronic device,
without turning off the power. Ex 2: I spray paint my avantgarde art
in my living room without covering the floor/furniture. Pretty simple
really.
B. Clumsiness
is our physical coordination/motor skills failing. Ex 3: This could
be your mother knocking her little toe into the door again or ex 4:
You tripping over a rock.
C. Sheer bad luck
is the situations where you had no real chance of foreseeing the
incident or effecting the result. Ex 5: Dude A throws a water balloon
at dude B, and hits you, while you're standing with your back to them
both. Or ex 6: you keep on rolling 1's on an honest die.
A. Stupidity
B. Clumsiness
C. Bad luck
The result of poor/lack of consideration
Failing motor skills
Unforeseeable incidents, or random chance
Ex. brushing your teeth while peeing standing, believing it won't make a mess.
Ex. dropping your Iphone on marble floor.
Ex. getting hit by a meteor, or falling in love with your sister whom you've never met before.
There you have it.
However it doesn't take much of a brainiac to see, that these three
categories will overlap in pretty much every single situation. How
so? Let's take some more examples. Ex 7: You get hit by a car while
crossing the road – auch! This is part bad luck (C) since the car
being there at the time is not really your fault. It's also
clumsiness (B) since you should have watched your step instead of
rushing out on the road. It could also be part stupidity (A), if you
knew the road was heavily trafficked, and therefore perhaps should
have chosen a better crossing spot. In general I would say the main
reason for getting run down by a car is clumsiness, unless the driver
is in some unusual state.
Ex 8: Being to lazy to
walk twice you decide to stack up your plates, cups etc. to a small
mountain and try to balance it down the stairs. Of course you drop a
glass or two and they shatter. This can be bad luck (C), if somehow
the conditions were different from usual, and you perhaps had no way
of knowing the stairs were slippery today. However it is mainly the
cause of your failing to estimate (A) your own motor skills (B). In
this way the first time it happens it may be primarily a matter of
clumsiness. However the fifth time you try the same trick and break
more stuff, this will have turned into stupidity (A).
Many more examples
could be made, and arguably no misfortune does not include some of
all three elements, however this may be an aid in realizing if you a
unlucky, clumsy or just plain stupid.
Having accounted for
solution 1 and 2, I will now dive into the third and last option for
the trendsetting hipster in his quest to be alternative. In part 1 I
called it to “Distance yourself from the new hipsters by diving
right back into the mainstream”. This is actually a bit wrong,
since this last stage describes settling wherever you want, no matter
how many others are already in that spot. But does this not mean
giving up on the entire hipster-dream? Let me explain...
Søren Kierkegaard's
final character in his theory of stages is the religious 'Knight of
Faith'. This character represents the individual, who has gone beyond
the average 'culturally religious' person. Earlier characters in the
religious stage are part of the religious congregation, and find
their personality as a part of that group (the mainstream). The
religious character of the Knight of Faith is impossible to see. He
acts, talks and lives as any other man, and it is impossible to see,
that this individual has taken the leap of faith and made himself
independent of the recognition of others. To Kierkegaard, the
character at the end of the religious stage is indistinguishable from
all others.
How does this tie in
with the hipster? Or should I say meta hipster, for this is when he
steps into the picture. The meta Hipster has abandoned his search for
alternativity on the outside and may as such look in any way
possible. He has internalized his alternativity and hipsterness, and
become a one-man culture – a meta hipster (meta = greek for
'after', ie meta hipster = that which comes after the hipster). Like
the Knight of Faith, the meta hipster no longer needs the recognition
of others to sustain his alternativity. He can now satisfy his
alternatomania simply through the knowledge, that he is a unique
individual, who has chosen his own way.
Having seen the
meaninglessness in the eternal struggle for alternativity, the meta
hipster makes his own cultural meaning. To be able to make the meta
hipsters 'leap of faith', one must first realize the nihilism that is
as much hipster-culture as it is the mainstream, and through that
knowledge create his own cultural values. Exactly this character,
that rises above nihilism, is by the German philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche (1844-1900) called “Der Übermensch” or “the
overman”, and in his writings this means seeing through the system
that is Christian morals, and making your own values. In our context
it could mean listening to George Michael, well
knowing that it is some of the least cool tunes imaginable (at
least in my social circles), simply because one chooses to.
The meta hipster is
indistinguishable from everyone else. He may look mainstream or goth.
He may seem nerdy in the hip way, or nerdy in the real way. Only he
himself knows, that he has in fact made the leap of faith from the
meaninglessness of fashion and trends, into a world that is his own
construction, where individuality and alternativity has been
internalized to a silent wisdom: “I am who I am – And I'm the
only one.”
Last
time I ended up with the hipster's three choices after breaking out
from the mainstream. He may (1) settle himself where he is, knowing
that others will mimic him, and end up forming a new subculture.
Another option for our newborn hipster is (2) to keep on distancing
himself from not only the mainstream, but also the other newer
hipsters, by continuingly ironizing against all others, as we saw in
Kierkegaards esthete 'A', thus fighting for his own uniqueness.
Lastly there is the possibility for the hipster (3) to dive right
back into the mainstream he just barely escaped. We'll get back to
this one later on. In short the hipster can stay where he is, move
forward to something new, or go back to where he was...
The
first choice is probably the most common, and this is where our
average hipster ends up. But would this not be giving up on the
hipster dream of alternativity? That depends on the subject in
question, and the degree of his “alternat-omania” - ie. his
hunger for the alternative. This is a driving force in pretty much
all of mankind through all time (tho' we weren't always conscious of it), and it has become more clear and extreme in the postmodern age. In the most light degree
this means that we all want to be just a tiny bit different from
everyone else. After all, if we were completely similar, there would
be no room for personality and individuality. So even if I would want
to look like, talk like and in pretty much every single way be
similar to some role-model, I would not want to become him. That
would imply loosing myself and thereby becoming nothing in the
process.
So
the lightest degree of this mania only means the will to retain one's
own existence. At higher degrees we see changes at first in music,
clothing and hobbies growing into new social circles, personality and
morals.
We
find our average hipster in the middle of this, where style, music
and more of the outer characteristics have been alternated from the
mainstream, while the deeper constitutions (religion and morals etc.)
remain pretty much the same as the mainstream's.
Others
however can not be satisfied by settling with a smaller group of
supposed like-mindeds, they are constantly driven towards the point
of ultimate, absolute, cultural solitude and alternativeness. Their
styles will change as soon as they discover someone else with a
similar style as their current. However with the great diversity we
find in our modern culture(s), this will lead to a never ending
evolution, that does not aim towards a 'better' or 'higher' state,
but only a different one. And this may very well lead to any kind of
degeneration (ex. a moral one). It is curious that these individuals
tend to become trendsetters, due to the sole fact that they are truly
unique – or at least as close as it gets. Hereby not having said,
that the truly “alternat-omaniacs” necessarily become evil,
degenerated demagogs, but they are however more exposed to this risk.
Enough
for now. I will bring my explanation of the third possibility next
time.
To get to my description of the
meta-hipster, I'll start with the original hipster.
The
hipster stands out from the mainstream in a lot of ways. We're
talking preference of music, clothing, movies etc.. This is a very
discussed topic, and has been portrayed very humorously by Alex Stone and Mike Cronin in The Hipster Song
We
however are going to take a look at the 'why'. Why stand out? Why be
different? Why spend hours on Spotify searching for that new indy
band that no one else knows? I believe my good friend Søren
Kierkegaard (1813-1855) may be able to help us solve this one. This Danish philosopher describes
the esthete 'A', who has an ironic take on life. He distances himself
from the philistine (mainstream) as he is confronted with the
meaningless of life. He sees how people in the mainstream are just
products of their contexts (trends, fashion etc.) and don't really
have any free will themselves, and this view forces the esthete to
withdraw from life itself. 'A' is like someone watching a game of
football, who just sits back and makes fun of the players. 'A' does
not involve himself in anything – he just mocks the mainstream for
their ignorance of the meaninglessness of their lives. He uses irony
to ridicule them, while at the same time making himself untouchable.
And that's exactly the point. Irony is a way of making yourself
invulnerable, since you do not have any opinions about anything. The
ironic 'A' can not be attacked, since he has no standpoints to
attack, and from this platform of nothing, he looks down on the petty
ants in the mainstream.
This
might be a bit of a harsh generalization to say about all Radiohead
fans, that they should have no opinions, that they distance
themselves from life, and that they are just making a mockery of
everyone else through irony. But I do think that some of the points
match. The average hipster probably hasn't hit a wall of
meaninglessness in life, but the thought of blending in with a large
mainstream could very likely frighten him/her
to try to establish his own culture/social group. The French
sociologist Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) describes the great mass as
“without property, without predicate, without quality and without
reference. Herein
consists its definition or its radical indefinition”. Who would
want to be a part of this void of meaning and personality? Not the
hipster – that's for sure.
So
the hipster pulls out of the mainstream category to create his own
individual meaning and style, liberated from generalization and group
mentality. But what happens then? His friend does the same thing. And
his friend with him. If there's one thing that is 'in' today, it is
standing 'out'. The hipster finds his project terrorized by the next
hipster in line. There are 3 ways to deal with this:
Stay
as you are and establish a new culture where you are.
Distance
yourself from the new hipsters by further evolving your style.
Distance
yourself from the new hipsters by diving right back into the
mainstream.
What
happens next? We'll see in part two!.... Whenever I get to it, that
is.
I will very shortly be posting my thoughts on meta-hipster culture, which in short is the subculture that will replace the hipster within the next few years.
