We are all a little more spherical methinks.
3 Likes
Hey all. I ended up in the emergency room today, and about to have emergency hernia surgery.
Thanks for all the comments, and I will respond as soon as I can.
6 Likes
So sorry to hear. Sincerely hope that the surgery goes well and you’re on the road to a full recovery soon. Take care and the best of luck with the surgery.
3 Likes
My thoughts are with you, have a speedy recovery.
2 Likes
All the best wishes for your recovery, @MrKiddWint ! 
3 Likes
I hope this discussion had nothing to do with it 
Wishing you all the best.
3 Likes
All the best for a speedy recovery, @MrKiddWint. Update us when you can.
2 Likes
As your Husband is a trained professional, you should be in good hands!
3 Likes
Thoughts and prayers for you and your loved ones during this time.
2 Likes
Hope it goes as well as it can. I have had two non-emergency hernia surgeries. The recovery for the first one was pretty painful for a week or two. The second was an umbilical hernia and was not that painful. Hoping your’s is pain free. Wishing you all the best!
1 Like
Everything went well. Already walking and doing certain biological functions which are a good sign.
And no SAF, the heavy lifting of our discussion did not bring it on, though cannot lift anything over 15 pounds for a few weeks.
12 Likes
I’m finished with No Deals, Mr Bond. The adventures of Jacko B aren’t particularly memorable but I found them compelling enough to continue reading. And yes, it should’ve been titled Blackfriar. I liked the gladiator conclusion with the Robinsons, and Bond was particularly brutal in his execution of Heather Dare: breaking her arm, spine and then shooting her in the head. Now for Scorpius.
3 Likes
I had the same surgery two months ago. Be sure to take advantage of the excuse to rest and relax. Definitely don’t push it. And watch out for stray objects, table corners, leaping pets, kicking toddlers, etc, all of whom will miraculously hit your surgical wound with pinpoint accuracy and maximum pain.
1 Like
Get well soon sir!
1 Like
Just finished Later by Stephen King - brilliant stuff yet again.
3 Likes
First: thank you all for your good wishes. I am home, and each day have an increasing range of interests beyond my incisions. Hardest part is not pushing it as Single-O-Seven wisely advised (though it is uncanny how my Min Pin always hits the most tender spot when he plops down next to me on the bed).
But it is a true response, which makes it profound.
I think the critique is fair if it is grounded in the formal elements of the work under discussion. I would call disliking a painting because there is/is not too much/not enough blue in it, an unfair critique, since it does not deal with the blue that is/or is not there.
For you, Dustin, the story working or not is paramount. For me, it is more how the film works as an aesthetic whole, with (hopefully) equal emphasis placed on form and content. But I will admit that nuanced and exquisite formal content can get me past myriad narrative slip-ups and errors.
Thanks Dustin; this helps. Where I would differ is that sometimes clichés and tropes come with biases/negative connotations attached, e.g., the Magical Negro. Unless an author takes a meta- approach, those biases affect/infect the story. When an artist uses the Magical Negro trope, they introduce racism into their story, and it leaches out from the trope and stains other elements of the work. The narrative may still function on the level of storytelling, and therefore, remain believable, but it loses credibility in other ways.
While nothing is meant to be taken seriously, the movies still convey cultural biases. Here is a recent article on IJATLC:
Even though the film is a fantasy/adventure, it uses actual cultural attitudes to shape its narrative. Jeff Reichart writes:
“If we can separate the Indiana Jones series from the specifically Western Judeo-Christian tradition and the objectively colonialist impulses underlying stories of a white male academic traveling to non-Western countries to take religious objects considered the property of the West, the films do make a thin case for the value of locating, collecting and cataloguing objects to fill out historical records.”
Non-serious tales can sell/promote a cultural agenda as well as a documentary can.
3 Likes
Good to read you are on the mend!
And, of course, I have questions for you.
If form helps you to get over narrative let‘s call it uncertainties what do you think of Terrence Malick? I like his style but I somehow get the feeling sometimes that he loses his narrative and hides it behind his visuals.
As for Indiana Jones - one cannot deny that the basic idea of this character is that being a graverobber for museums is good if you are a white American. And everybody else is either a funny ally or an evil opponent.
As a German, however, I did not feel insulted by the portrayal of the Nazis. They are the evil antagonists here just as the Thuggee sect is in „Temple of doom“. Their nationalities (German, Indian) are not part of their behavior, IMO. Or is that just my personal perspective?
1 Like
His narratives are fable-like to me, and his visuals serve to tell his fables.
Not Malick, but comparable: during my convalescence, I watched the restored version of SOME CAME RUNNING on blu-ray, and what struck me was how Minnelli told his story so thoroughly through his mise en scene, e.g., the colors, the placement of objects; how characters move within the frame. All these elements are the narrative equals to the dramatic/verbal actions that also move the story along. For Minnelli, the placement of a vase of flowers in a living room is as eloquent as pages of dialogue in another director’s work.
With regard to Nazis: they actually existed, and did (more or less) the things ascribed to them by Spielberg.
Magical Negroes are not based on historical fact. They are a white concoction of how good Blacks should act—helpful, docile, non-threatening. Spielberg’s Nazis are fictional representations of historical figures, who act in (general) accord with known facts. Magical Negroes are tropes created and promoted by white people as role models in an attempt to delimit Black behavior.
You should not be offended at watching Nazis do what Nazis are known to have done. However, if a film maintained that to be German is to be a Nazi, then I can see where offense would be taken.
2 Likes
I never saw the „magical negro“ as subservient to white people. My impression was the soulfulness of the afro-american people was personified in that trope, a deeper spiritual connection, something that white people never had or had lost.
I agree with @MrKiddWint on this, the magical Negro is a racist invention, as is the inscrutable, devious Chinese’s, the lazy Mexican, the Noble Indigenous Chief, The Alcoholic Irish. The atrocities of the Nazis, the pagentry of their ‘cult’ for want of a better word, means that they made themselves symbols of almost fiction, so aren’t being used to stereotype the German people.
1 Like