The Dead Sit Up

 I cannot remember much, I cannot feel much. Maybe erasure is necessary. Maybe the human spirit defends itself as the body does, attacking infection, enveloping and destroying those malignancies that would otherwise consume us. (Tim O’Brien) On Veteran’s Day, we are told only to honor those who have served this …

Between Impression and Expression: Rod Serling

How can you put out a meaningful drama when every fifteen minutes, proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper?  No dramatic art form should be dictated and controlled by men whose training and instincts are cut of an entirely different cloth.  The fact remains that these gentlemen …

Maximum Concentration on Disaster

The bosses of our mass media — press, radio, film and television — have their aim of taking our minds off disaster.  Thus, the distraction they offer demands the antidote of maximum concentration on disaster. (Ernst Fischer) Just a quick one tonight, inspired by Sony Pictures’ firing of Dan Harmon. …

The Most Beautiful Fraud: Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

The reason boredom deserves such scrutiny is that it represents pure, undiluted time in all its repetitive, redundant, monotonous splendor. Boredom is your window on the properties of time that one tends to ignore to the likely peril of one’s mental equilibrium. It is your window on time’s infinity. Once this …

The Derelict Appendages of Criticism

Nineteen Eighty-Four is not often thought of as a useful text for illumination of the art of criticism, but like all great writers, Orwell contained multitudes of meaning in his writing, leaving great lessons barely concealed for application to whatever subject needed them.  At the book’s very beginning, Winston Smith opens …