Re: Moviegoer and despair


Subject: Re: Moviegoer and despair
From: McNair, Lisa (Lisa_McNair@MCGRAW-HILL.COM)
Date: Thu Nov 11 1999 - 12:21:51 EST


These questions and posts were so invigorating that I just typed out my
thoughts, and now I've thought I might as well send them in:

Regarding Jim's question, the problem of the person who knows he has given
up is the problem of being aware that one exists in a void. Even the
life-affirming emotion of fear is largely inaccessible because life and
death are on an even par. It seems to me that Binx has an impoverished
emotional life: he is so removed from his own war experiences, Kate's
near-death existence, and even his half-brother's tragic predicament.
Actually, now that I type this I think I may be wrong here. Remember the
scene in the quarter when Binx watches with joy as the young honeymooner
nonchalantly lights William Holden's cigarette, thereby claiming a real
place in the universe? But then not much later the entire street succumbs to
the malaise...the aftermath of the superficial rush, the crash after the
sugar-high. How does the "malaise" relate to "despair"? I want to agree with
Rhonda that Binx has been freed to search, or is struggling to free himself
BY searching. Instead of the existential void, a search implies faith.

The specific character of despair must be those who are unaware of it
precisely because they think things can still be easily fixed. Even though
their sports car and cute secretary don't make everything okay, they do not
attribute this to a general malaise but to, perhaps, not having the right
sweater, or having forgotten the picnic basket. In other words, they think
it can be fixed by something superficial and that's the plane that they keep
searching on. This NOT searching leads to despair. And that's how they've
given up or given IN to a society that urges and urges you to join their
club of pretending to be happy and fulfilled via material gains and
established dogma instead of a spiritual search.

--Lisa

P.S. I've just joined this list. I went to UGA for an English degree and now
am trying to write my Ph.D dissertation in Linguistics at UChicago while
working a real job here at home in Atlanta.



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