| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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Five minutes ago I placed a bid on three R. Kern films, and I don't know why. The auction will end in 3 hours. I think I had in mind that this would be an educational purchase. I can tell you that I will probably watch them alone, in a dark room, with wide eyes. I do know that one of the films has a scene of a man wrapping a wire around his chest tighter and tighter until he bleeds. I predict I will watch that and feel horror and nothing at all at the same time. The part of me in the front will be horrified, and the part in the back will watch without feeling anything. That kind of dual-ness happens frequently, I've noticed. In October, my brother and I got into a mild car accident, and the woman we hit fell unconscious although we didn't hit her car hard at all. Half of me was very upset and very afraid for the lady, and the other half was reflecting on how interesting it was that half of me was upset and the other half was reflecting on...and so on. On Christmas day, my mother gave me a tongue-lashing in front of my entire family about not having direction in life, and half of me was very angry and embarrassed, and the other half was sitting detached in the back, giving comments on the situation. My uncle and I had a talk about my future career plans, and I told him that if psychology didn't exist I would have to invent it myself because it is perfectly suited for the way I think. What I mean by that is that the way I think is geared towards solving mysteries, and what's more mysterious than the space inside a human? You take something -- behaviour -- that you don't understand, and you try to get to the bottom of it by inducing the internal states that could have inspired such behaviour. The thing is, I think I take my analyzations too far. I think I engage in thinking when I shouldn't. It's impossible for me to ever be "in the moment," whatever I do. I could be having the best time of my life, or the worst time of my life, and I never fully abandon myself to the experience. There is always a piece that's looking at everything from above and saying, "Look at this. Isn't it interesting how you're [x] instead of [y]? Why is that?" There's a line in a W.S. Merwin poem: "I am never all of me unto myself." I think that's a good way of putting it. Someone (I'm flashing on Dostoevsky for some reason) calls it "hypertrophy of conscience." That's also a good term. Check this out: "Depersonalization Disorder SYMPTOMS 1. Persistent or recurrent experiences of feeling detached from, and as if one is an outside observer of, one's mental processes or body (e.g., feeling like one is in a dream). 2. During the depersonalization experience, reality testing remains intact. 3. The depersonalization causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. 4. The depersonalization experience does not occur exclusively during the course of another mental disorder, such as Schizophrenia, Panic Disorder, Acute Stress Disorder, or another Dissociative Disorder, and is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medication) or a general medical condition (e.g., temporal lobe epilepsy)." That would explain a lot if that's what is going on. It does cause me social impairment, because I'm so extremely self-conscious. I can't pay attention to *you* because too much of my attention is focused on "Look at yourself. Look at how you're sitting. Look at what you're doing. Why did you say that? You should have said....oh, now you're blushing. Hope he doesn't notice." It's very annoying. But how do you stop? As soon as you become aware that you're doing it, you've given in. How do you teach yourself not to pay attention to yourself? |
I've thought about it before, and I think that's what being *shy* is. Horrible, over-analysis of yourself. or maybe I'm just crazy. |
The films are extremely gore, a lot of it obviously fake and hilarious. The dialog is so over the top, it's hilarious, you will laugh, and i think thats the point. There is a subversive sense of humor amongst his films and anything else he tries to pass them off as is utter bullshit. Fingered is my fav |
It's interesting that you mention SY's Evol, because a friend of mine in high school copied that cover for an art project because she thought it was so cool. Little did we know it was a Kern photo. |
Unless you feel that your inability to be in your body for some things is a negative trait I wouldn't let it trouble me. I find that in times where I should be experiencing more pain (breakups, deaths) I find it hard to be totally present. I'm always outside looking in and seeing the irony or the Television quality of life. |
I got the Richard Kern films in the mail this week. I haven't seen them yet...I'm waiting for a time when no one will be in the lounge so I can watch them without company. Maybe tonight or tomorrow night. |
I found that very unpleasant and I was worried that no one had properly explained to the little boy that this was just acting. Then there was one, "The Manhattan Love Suicides," that was very difficult to understand. It starts with an artist and his girlfriend walking down the street, and they're followed by a man (who looked like Hugh Laurie of "Blackadder") who's walking like a monster and grimacing. They don't notice him, and the girlfriend goes into a store (and is not seen again in the movie). The artist goes to an ATM, and he turns around and sees the guy behind him, but doesn't look surprised. The scary guy smiles broadly, and then you see the two of them walking down the street together, talking, and the scary man is clinging to the artist's sleeve and stroking him and stuff. Then they're in the artist's studio, where he's working on a painting, and the scary man is trying to get is attention and acting very clingy, which is annoying the artist. So the scary man starts bleeding and the artist looks bored, and eventually the scary man's left arm falls off and he falls on the floor (presumably dead) and the artist picks up the arm in disgust, puts it in the sink, and starts sketching the fallen body of the scary man while laughing. The end. I didn't get it. Who was the scary man supposed to be? The credits called him "The fan," but then why wasn't the artist afraid of him, and why was he angry at the artist at first but then weirdly affectionate toward him after the ATM scene? |
And fourthly, it was hard to tell what Kern's point was with all of this gore, all of those scenes of people mutilating themselves. There was no voice-over or anything (this was "Submit to Me Now")...just people hurting themselves and others to the music of Foetus. Atonal, percussive music, too. Were we just supposed to be shocked? But it was kind of funny. So were we supposed to laugh? But it was boring. So....what? |
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