Change Your Image
joeyhumble
Reviews
Whiplash (2014)
faux-realistic claptrap about student abuse
This movie to be has major contradiction at the heart of it: the direction which is realistic and and the character of Terrence Fletcher who is about the most unlikely and unbelievable persona I have ever seen on film. As a academic who has worked in three universities I have seen aggressive and bullying teachers who bully and Terrence fletcher, who lies, screeches and physically assaults his students repeatedly within the first 30 minutes of the movie, would have been fired within a few months of his first contract.
This movie is a child of our times where in American (and British) television and Cinema, antihero adoration has become the established norm (see "House" and "breaking bad"), yet presentation of role models or sympathetic lead roles is considered cliché. Movies are considered art as long as they make the audience feel something ANYTHING even if it's profound discomfort. When I watched this movie I felt like turning it off. So does this make it art? If it is then I would rather be low brow.
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace: The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts (2011)
Food for thought
Here Adam Curtis weaves together a historical and cognitive tapestry of intrigue and humanity. Typical of his documentaries, he takes a influential school of thought and uses archival news and television clips combined with contemporary interviews to unpack and explain the theory (here its ecological stability and computer systems), he then shows the profound impact of the idea throughout history in many aspects of political and cultural changes inspired by the idea. Personally, his take on the misuse of the idea of the balance of nature to be spot on. The misconception being that if humans can mimic the natural order by removing all authoritarian power all people interacting as inter-regulating nodes exchanging ideas and services then this can create a better society. Unfortunately this idea takes into no account of human selfishness and fails to appreciate that the ecosystem this is modeled upon is actually chaotic and involves unfairness and destruction. My only qualm is that he failed to mention that there are aspects of the "balance of nature" model which have stood the test of time, namely that predators do regulate the abundance of prey, yet still this is not a system suitable to model a fair society on.