#not making grand metaphors about nature and the deeper human condition

[fictionadventurer]

August: Day 25

Adventures

Spent way too long at the library

Checked out a book that was so old and hadn't been checked out for so long that it was no longer in the library's computer system

Enjoyed an hour of silence at home resting in the peace of the wind outside and the sunlight and shadows of trees flickering on the floor

Read poetry under a tree in the sunset

Writing

Read part of Ruta Sepetys' book on writing

Wrestled with the desire to write a personal, meaningful novel while having no idea what project could fill that need

[avoutput]

Ulysses || Waterworld

Somewhere in 1996, a young boy and possibly his cohorts are sitting on a dirty couch or splayed across a carpeted den floor ridden with crumbs or something like it. In the VCR is a rented copy of an infamous film of one kind or another from the local discount video rental which ran a special every Thursday, 10 videos for 10 dollars. If a new film was considered especially bad, it skipped the “New Releases” and made its way right to the genre section. Children are especially gullible. Or inexperienced. Or stupid. But they do know a bargain and have more than enough time to waste. The stack probably consisted of a few new and repeat rentals: Thunder in Paradise, Surf Ninjas, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Twelve Monkeys, Billy Madison, Clueless, Bad Boys. Basically, anything our parents wouldn’t want us to buy. (My parents notoriously lacked the ability to understand the ratings system of both film and later games.) And yet, there was one special gem that stands out as being universally un-cult, un-loved, and yet known round the globe: Waterworld. Fast-forward twenty-three years and those same ugly kids are sitting on nicer couches and carpetless floors about to make the same mistake all over again. A recently rebuilt, full length, uncut copy dubbed “Ulysses” was released. A 3-hour cut made up of unreleased material and television edit made for a surprisingly nostalgic afternoon. It was like wasting time as a kid all over again.

First, a couple of thoughts on the new version that was released to give you an idea of the overall changes.The “Ulysses” cut of Waterworld seems to be some kind of fan created cut, including all of the cut material from the theatrical version, some scenes from the television cut, and an altered color palette that made everything more crisp and bright. It differs largely from the VHS version I had seen as a kid, obviously sharper with high definition, but jarring in that it had more than the 3 colors associated with the end of the world. Strangely, the new scenes somehow didn’t seem out of place. It was longer, but I couldn’t tell where the old content ended and the new content began, though there are some scenes edited in that were clearly never finished. You can see an island in the background that shouldn’t be there and there are a couple layers of post-production missing. What I can say for certain is the brighter color palette was not the best decision. While it made the ocean look a deeper shade of blue, it felt less gloomy. This was supposed to be a dystopian world covered in both water and despair. This new cut made it feel a bit more like a children’s adventure film without the fun, wonder, or sense of adventure found in films like The Goonies or Pirates of the Caribbean. It was like slapping some color on Twelve Monkeys and busting it down to a PG-13 rating. Still, it's the best the modern world has to offer.

The most memorable thing about this film for me has always been Kevin Costner and Dennis Hopper. If you can’t remember, the characters largely live by their titles and don’t have traditional names. Costner played the lead as “Mariner”, a mutated human with ability to breath underwater. The Mariner’s character arc is inadequate and unfulfilling. It confused me as much today as it did when I was a kid. Let’s take Terminator 2 as an example. Cyberdyne Model T101 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) has more character growth in both action and attitude than Costner’s drift wooden Mariner. They both have similar interactions with their allies, but the Terminator actually gets along with both kids and mothers, like Kix cereal. In the 80’s and 90’s this was a pretty common character dynamic, stoic-seeming adults learning from kids. You might think Waterworld is going to follow this dynamic, but instead its sets a course on an endless desert ocean, drained of character and depth, and opts instead to make our hero as bland as his surroundings. The Mariner isn’t without his good points though. He does sail spectacularly and has some fun tricks up his sleeve both on and off the boat. But Costner appears to have absolutely no feeling in every delivery. Even when he's mad, it doesn’t feel right. I thought the extended edition would give me a deeper glimpse into his arc or growth, but it’s non-existent. Costner plays a truly mutated character.

Waterworld does have an ocean of visual treasures to offer, to borrow a washed out metaphor. The seafaring is entertaining and well shot. The props all have carved Styrofoam look that remind you of a swashbuckling children’s film, but oddly it doesn’t detract from the dystopian feel the production is meant to have. The floating sets really do feel like functioning habitats, but if you look to long, you get the feeling that the design department went a bit too far in trying to make the barges look like they were made from debris, to the point that it becomes a comical game of “I Spy”. This stage-like quality was especially present in the new “Ulysses” cut, which also has the added benefit of having the film upgraded to 4k (or visually adjacent) which gave definition where it was strategically vague in its initial release. The murky browns, greys, and blurred lines of the 90’s era VHS cinematic apocalypse have given way to the fine lines and details of technological advancement. Like human age, its both a service of time and largely for the better, but it has its downsides. Stunts that were hard to make out are crystal clear and even more impressive, although in its clarity, it looks like a professional stunt show from Disneyland or Universal Studios, which makes perfect sense. I think I read that Waterworld was one of the most popular attractions at Universal Studios despite the movie not being a hit.

Finally, the overall nature of the world our characters reside in is epic in physical size, the whole world (presumably) is covered by water, but quaint in execution. This level of focus becomes a strength. The actors get to take a stand in front of this expansive stage and put on their best pirate act. If you can imagine, spending lots of time on the water could be stressful, and you get the feeling that the actors felt taxed by working in this manner. There is an underlying tension to every scene, even the more lighthearted ones. The production was plagued with bad weather, lost time, rebuilds, and a lengthy edit that caused the director to quit. But from this hellscape, there is a salvageable adventure story that rides at the precipice of an ever crashing wave, teetering between campy fun and a bizarre wipe-out. There is even a faint religious reasoning to the actions taken by the villains that didn’t make much of the theatrical cut. The people of the barges breed a life for each one lost, but the raiders believe in a sort of manifest destiny, take everything they can see and living much more freely than their environment can withstand, evident by the large number of children living on their ship in terrible conditions. But even the films darkest moments play for bold laughs and bravado.

This was, in my mind, the story of a person, basically a god amongst the people of his world, who wanted nothing but to take. He could breathe underwater and dive so deep that he could get soil, the currency of the world on top of the water, pay for whatever he wanted, and leave them with nothing. Its true, he couldn’t help everyone, but he chose to help no one. Until of course he owed a debt. A debt he tries to renege on a few times throughout the film. There was something there to explore, but they only ever scratch the surface of the Mariner. Instead, we go a long way to see a man make a single grand gesture that absolves him of all of his sins. Ultimately, Waterworld is an excuse to make a sci-fi/fantasy action movie on the water, floating on an inflated ego and a bloated budget in the middle of a monsoon, and yet somehow, it stays afloat until the credits.

~* 6/10 *~

[h-sleepingirl]

Scenes from a Hypnotic (Fifth) Date

It's impossible to talk about hypnosis without talking about magic. When you get past the bullshit, when you stop caring about the how and the why and the technicality in the moments that you connect, all you're left with is magic.

It's magical to share a space with a person in the way that you can when you learn how to learn about them, how to focus on them, how to let them understand you.

We do magic together, we create worlds and history and narratives and manifestations of our desires and deep fantasies. It's not even the heavy duty phenomena, the hallucinations and everything; it's the sense of reality and fantasy that intertwine and intoxicate.

Magic is everywhere. Magic is in his eyes, in my blood, in our breaths, in our minute, unconscious expressions.

In a brightly lit hotel room, eerily quiet except for the muted sounds of waves crashing outside.

--

Shaking on the bed as he whispers into my ear, conditioning me, playing with me like a toy.

"Sometimes it hits you hard," he murmurs. "Sometimes you think something reminded you of me, and you think about me and it turns you on... Sometimes it just gets you. But it's not that something reminded you. It's your own brain that's bringing me up."

The part of him that's infected me, the part that brainwashes me. It's making me weaker to him in the way that I desperately crave, playing on those dark themes that I've chased forever, things I thought I'd never have.

--

My mind being fucked, my brain is just a pussy and it's fucking all the words he's putting into it, hungry, desperate. It's not a passive sort of sex; my mind is fucking and grinding into his words, seduced, played, helpless. It's not a literary metaphor, it's the reality of what's happening.

I can feel the sounds physically going into my head, vibrating in there and wiping me away. I'm only sex; I'm a dumb, horny thing, taking away everything that I am to eagerly replace myself with what he wants, whatever the next whim is.

"Some words fuck you harder than others," he says, low and heated. "Helpless. Raped. Suggestible. Easy. Weak."

I feel like I might die, like I want to do the impossible, explode into nothingness, have him take me and fuck me psychologically, fuck every part of me like he's doing right now. Forever. Gone.

"2... 3... 4... 5."

I'm awake, my eyes are open, but I'm not functional. My body is shaking and I'm looking up at him, incredulous. He's looking back at me, clearly turned on and appreciative.

"Such a broken girl. It looks so good on you."

I can't speak. I can't. I can't. My mind is trying so hard to process but nothing is working. I can only stare at him, twisted up and wrecked.

When he talks, everything else in my mind is gone, replaced by his words. My thoughts aren't my own thoughts anymore. I can't trust my own mind. But I'm too fucked to be scared or even fully turned on by it.

Just awe.

The arousal creeps up, slowly.

--

I'm addled.

It feels different than the sort of waking trance that we've generally done.

"I feel lucid," I tell him, pulling in close. "But lucid in the way that you actually feel lucid in a dream."

Clear, but fuzzy. There, but not quite. My brain is telling me that I'm all there, but I know that I'm not. The words keep coming out with all the confidence and lost inhibitions of a dream. I don't know where my words begin and end, how much of me is talking without influence.

"I don't feel like I exist as me. I feel like I'm an extension of you... I feel like I'm a projection you made."

"Mm-hmm." He's stroking my hair while I clutch at him, shaken.

"I have no control," I whisper, and even as I finish speaking it hits me, so hard, the reality of it, the deep and intense sex of it, the feeling that I spoke it from somewhere very far inside myself. I curl into him, suddenly desperate as my mouth repeats it incredulously: "I have no control... I have no control. I have no control -- oh, god --"

"Yes," he growls, suddenly turned on, holding my head. "That's right. That's what's important."

That's right. That's what's important.

I'm an open, blank slate, and I have no control.

--

He's weaving spells around me, through me. His power is soaking into my skin, through my head, down my spine, flooding throughout my body.

Magic. Magic is flowing into me. Magic is infecting me, right below the skin, a thin layer that imbues itself in me, sits there, enchanting me.

Enchanting me.

My body becomes more responsive, more controlled. I can feel the magic changing me, capturing me, living with me not in a symbiotic relationship, but parasitic, glowing softly under my skin.

Permanent. Or persistent.

It's a mark, unseeable, a reminder, a hickey, a blown kiss, a mechanism, a fantasy, an MCStory, fairy eyes, an anchor, a suggestion, an operant, bullshit bullshit bullshit strip away the bullshit and it's just magic.

The spell makes it even easier for him to control me. The magic makes me more attractive to him, changing me to suit him incrementally, more, easier to brainwash, already brainwashing me, sexier, more responsive, inside and outside of my awareness.

It tingles, but it doesn't tingle. I feel alive.

--

How awake am I, really?

"Sit up."

My body moves effortlessly, moved by magic, and when it's finished, it sits and looks at him. Ready. Waiting. Perfectly controlled.

"Deep trance."

I don't even really feel or notice my eyes rolling back. Just gone, instantly.

"Wake up."

And awake, frighteningly fast, waiting again.

The depth of control is undeniable, impossible. The unattainable, the most desired thing, the dream of hypnosis I've had since I was a child, true mind control.

"Controlling you is the most natural thing for me," he says in a moment of blown-away introspection. "It's effortless. It takes no effort."

We share in the awe of it, how staggering it is. It's not cocky, it's not bragging, it's not a suggestion. But of course it's all of those things, too.

--

We're outside while I have a cigarette. It's dark out and the beach has no one on it anymore; there are just the lights of buoys and boats dotting the horizon, and the sound of waves crashing gently, rhythmically.

I'm staring off into the dark, dark ocean, mesmerized by the white crests appearing and disappearing.

"That sound is going to be in my memory," I say.

We talk and talk more; gentle, light chat, and some deeper. About childhood stories, about the day.

About us. About how what we do is so incredible. About how I'm so fucked.

"I was thinking about the eyes," I say. "I thought it would be kind of funny if every time we had a date, you just replaced a different part of me."

Until there was nothing left.

"I know," he says. "I was thinking about it, too. Because that was the original idea. To give you those magic eyes, fairy eyes, doll eyes, or whatever, and turn you into a doll. That was the idea."

Years ago.

"Then it was just this magic thing under your skin. Replacing that way."

I feel a little taken by it, still powerfully controlled. It's quiet. I'm so happy. There's nothing better than this romance, than romance with mind control.

"I mean," I begin. My heart pounds with the weight of what I want to say, the thing I've wanted to say. It hurts. It feels like something crushing me inside, like I'm losing some grand battle. It's not about pride, and it's not about brainwashing, and it's not about strength. It's about the real weakness of human emotion.

He's quiet, giving me space.

"You know I'm falling in love with you, right?"

I'm smiling a sad little defeated smile at him as I say it. I know what he's going to say; I picked the easy phrasing.

I caught him a bit off guard, his eyes are smiling but he looks softly blown away. I don't know how long it is before he speaks. It could be a moment, but I have no way of knowing.

"Yeah," he says. "I mean. Yeah. I didn't want to be an asshole about it but I was sort of wondering when you were going to stop just making weird noises."

Sounds of the waves.

We keep talking.

--

@hypnokinkwithmrdream

[we-pay-for-everything]

The Big Bads of Angel: Part 3

Hey! You should read Part 1 first! (And check out Part 2!)

Season 3: Lilah, Sahjhan, Holtz

Season 3 is a very personal, intimate, season. Seasons 1 and 2 are very much about Angel, but Angel is representative of human nature itself and the message statement of the show. The first two seasons especially, are about the meaning of life, loneliness, love, friendship, good vs. evil, etc.. I always that say season 3 is an oddity in the Angelverse, because while it’s about friendship, parenthood, romance, family - all things that add meaning to life, of course - it’s not exactly a metaphor for the human condition the same way other seasons are. Season 3 is, like I said, more intimate, because it concerns the Angel Investigations’ gang, at its prime, individually and collectively, from romantic entanglements to family and friendships. 

Season 3 is less about this monstrous, complicated thing we call Life, and more about the smaller, mundane, things that make up our every day existence. 

Because of that, Wolfram&Hart have no big ideas for Angel. They thwart his plans, pester him endlessly, but it’s aimless somehow, lacking focus. Lilah gets so bored by their lack of ambition, she even goes off-script! (She conspires with Sahjhan to kill Angel.). Lilah targets Cordelia, Connor, Angel, Wesley, etc. but it’s Holtz and Sahjhan who have the long term plan to destroy Angel.

Starting with Sahjhan, his plan is simply a ruse to eliminate Connor. He is, like all beings, afraid to die, and concocts a way to obliterate the one person who can destroy him. He travels to the past and retrieves Holtz, and then writes up a fake prophecy. Sahjhan’s actions are of no consequence to humankind, but they still cause a lot of damage (to Connor first and foremost, but to Wesley, Angel, and Holtz also). Moreover, the Angel Investigations’ team is forced apart.  

In season 3, Angel’s enemies aren’t the usual evil types who want to destroy the world, cause baseless destruction, make some money, etc. Their motives are personal, almost practical. Their ambitions hurt Angel, and those closest to him, but no one else. It’s similar to the real world, because when something happens to us, life goes on for everyone else; our struggles and suffering unknown and unacknowledged. 

Holtz represents this also. He was one of Angelus and Darla’s many victims. He alone remembers their crimes. He alone mourns his wife and his children. Holtz recruits others who have lost someone to vampires and received no justice. He gives them purpose, or rather an illusion of it. 

But Holtz has a deeper significance to Angel. He’s a reminder of his past, and as Angel gets caught up in being a dad and contemplates romancing Cordelia, he’s a reminder of how brief happiness is. No villain got more up close and personal than Holtz did. He stole Angel’s kid, became his father, and manipulated Connor into delivering the final blow to Angel. Connor’s actions, too, are personal. He doesn’t kill Angel. He forces Angel into isolation, in a dark place, with only his thoughts as company while he repeatedly drowns, feeling lost and hopeless. It’s a grotesque re-imagination of Quor’toth.  

And even if Skip puts his plan in motion in season 3, it’s not until season 4 that Jasmine, and her word domination and brain-washing scheme, gains traction. So season 3 is very much irrelevant in grand scheme of things. Angel and the gang are caught up in their lives, carelessly so, and their enemies are thinking of themselves alone too. Their actions have little reach, but a huge impact in their lives. It’s a normal human existence, in short. 

[prudencepaccard]

so I wrote a term paper about Les Orientales and Le dernier jour d’un condamne five years ago that was supposed to be <20 pages but instead was over 30, the thesis was a hot mess but there were some good parts. Most of them have been cannibalized for other papers or for conference presentations but rereading it I found a random bit that hasn’t been used but is still kinda nice

As we have seen, the color black links both the Tour Saint-Jacques in Le Dernier Jour and the rocks in "Nourmahal la Rousse"; it is also a feature of many more buildings, natural phenomena, and even imaginary landscapes in both works.[1] The Hôtel de Ville is "si noir qu'il est noir au soleil" (350), a quality Allan Stoekl astutely connects to its all-consuming horror and corruption.[2] The carriage the condamné takes from the Conciergerie to Bicêtre and back again is described as "si sale, si noir, si poudreux, que le corbillard des pauvres est un carrosse du sacre en comparaison" (318); among the aspects of the Palais de Justice that frighten the condamné upon his arrival there on the day of his execution are "cette noire chapelle" (325), possibly a reference to the Sainte-Chapelle; the guillotine's blade is a "triangle noir" (363); the condamné's afterlife imaginings contain a world of rolling heads where "tout sera noir" (354) and an inverted execution that takes place "par de noires nuits d'hiver" (ibid.); and when he attempts to escape the present by plunging himself into memories of his past, he conceptualizes them as "des îles de fleurs sur ce gouffre de pensées noires et confuses qui tourbillonnent dans mon cerveau" (344).

This blackness is not opposed to light, but part of a whole. According to Suzanne Guerlac, Hugo described a sort of chiaroscuro effect when presenting his concept of the sublime in the preface to Cromwell: "According to Hugo, the modern, Christian perspective is a totalizing vision. 'The modern muse will see things in a higher and broader light. It will realize that everything in creation is not humanely beautiful, that the ugly exists beside the beautiful...the grotesque on the reverse of the sublime, evil with good, darkness with light' (PC 362-63). The totality of nature manifests itself as a play of clair-obscur" (15). She later elaborates: "When Hugo describes the 'harmony of opposites' of the drama as points of intersection between opposing terms, he begins his list with the pair of grotesque/sublime and ends with tragic/comic. These two sets of terms figured in the initial series associated with dark and light" (17).

Indeed, so it is with all of Hugo's imagery: shadows, abysses, stars, fire, rain, sunshine, and flowers are all part of a whole, without the "good" canceling out the "bad," the "light" cancelling out the "dark," and the "natural" (i.e., God-made) canceling out the "artificial" (i.e., man-made). Quotation marks are necessary because in Hugo, such categories resist definition. True, as Stoekl says, "This memory [the memory the condamné conjures up in order to distract himself while awaiting execution], otherwise banal, takes on its pathos from the 'black and confused thoughts' which surround it; it is a flower, a sacred locus, just as the two children make up a special space, separated from the world—but the pathos of the memory derives from the very fact that it cannot be isolated forever from all that surrounds it" (46); similarly, the reflected sunlight the condamné sees on the wall of the hallway outside his Conciergerie cell, the "douce réverberation dorée" (276), derives its pathos from the darkness surrounding it—it is a "reflet jaune où des yeux habitués aux ténèbres d'une prison savent si bien reconnaître le soleil [emphasis mine]" (ibid.). And yet, sunlight is not merely a symbol of the ideal world the condamné is being banished from, a representation of all that his sentence deprives him of—a collection of "goods" he inventories in Chapter Seven as "le soleil, le printemps, les champs pleins de fleurs, les oiseaux qui s'éveillent le matin, les nuages, les arbres, la nature, la liberté, la vie" (287); no, it is part and parcel of the grandeur and terror of the void.

The contrast initially seems straightforward: sunlight is life and freedom, poignantly mise en valeur by all the darkness, doom and ignominy of the condamné's condition. The sunlight on the wall is particularly noticeable to eyes used to the gloom of a prison; this reflected sunlight is the harbinger of the beautiful day outside, which he only gets to experience directly on his way from his cell to the cour d'assises; the sunlight filling the courtroom, and the sight of a yellow flower in the window, causes the condamné to believe—wrongly, naïvely—that he cannot possibly be sentenced to death. This interpretation is backed up by the fact that the sunlight, the flower growing outside the window of the courtroom, etc. all become pale and washed-out after the death sentence is pronounced. However, things become more complicated after the condamné's arrival in Bicêtre. In his cell, the condamné encounters neither sunlight nor darkness, only "la marche lente de ce carré blanchâtre que le judas de ma porte découpe vis-à-vis sur le mur sombre" (284-5).

Later, during the ferrage in the courtyard, a sunny day gives way in the middle of the ceremony to "une froide averse d'automne" (300); however, this is not a simple contrast between "happy" sun and "sad" rain, for it is the reappearance of the sun that provokes the grotesque, in the form of a spectacle enacted by degraded people seeking to, if not regain their humanity, at least reclaim their élan: "Un rayon de soleil reparut. On eût dit qu'il mettait le feu à tous ces cerveaux.[3] Les forçats se levèrent à la fois, comme par un mouvement convulsif [...] Ils tournaient à fatiguer les yeux. Ils chantaient une chanson du bagne" (302). The sun has become associated with the transgression of criminality, not the freedom of innocence.

Similarly, the sun which the condamné does his best to bask in moments before hearing a teenage girl sing a "repulsive" argot song no longer marks a contrast with the criminal world; rather, it is just another part of the pitilessness of Bicêtre's universe, a universe the condamné had been trying to escape by wishing for birdsong (and then focusing on the human song he heard instead), and which contaminates everything it touches: "Ah! qu'une prison est quelque chose d'infâme! Il y a un venin qui y salit tout. Tout s'y flétrit, même la chanson d'une fille de quinze ans! Vous y trouvez un oiseau, il a de la boue sur son aile; vous y cueillez une jolie fleur, vous la respirez; elle pue" (311-2).

Outside the walls of Bicêtre, the trend continues. The fragrance of the flower market that the condamné passes on the way to his execution is more than an ironic or pathetic juxtaposition of beauty and horror, but has a deeper meaning when the condamné explains that "Les marchandes ont quitté leur bouquets pour moi" (368): namely that even flower merchants aren't necessarily pure of heart, and by extension flowers themselves lose their perfection. Nor is the rain that falls throughout the day of the condamné's execution merely the expression of a pathetic fallacy. Unlike the narrator of "November" whose muse laments, "[C]ar je m'ennuie/A voir ta blanche vitre où ruisselle la pluie,/Moi qui dans mes vitraux avais un soleil d'or!" (337), the condamné is not merely brought back to reality by the rain on the windowpane of the cell in the Conciergerie in which he spends the last hours before his execution, replacing the sun-filled windows in the cour d'assises at the beginning of the novel, "ces losanges éclatants aux fenêtres [dont] chaque rayon découpait dans l'air un grand prisme de poussière d'or" (278) and "larges fenêtres lumineuses" (280); rather, it is a reminder of the condamné's relative impermanence vis-à-vis the weather, and also of the complete hopelessness of his situation, which places him beyond the reach of even spiritual comfort: "Comme le jour du départ de la chaîne, il tombait une pluie de la saison, une pluie fine et glacée qui tombe encore à l'heure où j'écris, qui tombera sans doute toute la journée, qui durera plus que moi" (319) and "Ce matin, j'étais égaré. J'ai à peine entendu ce [que le prêtre] m'a dit. Cependant ses paroles m'ont semblé inutiles, et je suis resté indifférent; elles ont glissé comme cette pluie froide sur cette vitre glacée" (337).

[1] A comprehensive survey of Hugo's use of the color black is obviously far beyond the scope of this paper, but it is worth noting that its importance extends past Le Dernier Jour d'un condamné and Les Orientales. In fact, there was an exhibit of Hugo's drawings organized around this concept, called "Les arcs-en-ciel du noir," at the Maison de Victor Hugo in 2012. The creator of the exhibit, Annie Le Brun, has also written extensively about the topic.

[2] Although the astrophysical metaphor he uses in saying it is "composed of a kind of antimatter, its blackness seemingly absorbing even the sun's light" (45) would probably be more aptly replaced with a comparison to a black hole.

[3] Like many things in Le Dernier Jour, Hugo reuses this image in Les Misérables: "Brusquement, le soleil parut; l'immense rayon de l'orient jaillit, et l'on eût dit qu'il mettait le feu à toutes ces têtes farouches. Les langues se délièrent; un incendie de ricanements, de jurements et de chansons fit explosion" (229 Tome II).

[mrmichaelchadler]

Sundance 2019: Dolce Fine Giornata, Divine Love, Monos, Queen of Hearts

Among the standouts in this year’s World Dramatic Competition section at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, four remarkable films center on female leads that find themselves on high-stakes, life-altering (and in one case, life-or-death) crossroads.

Set within the laid-back, casual cadences of a small town in Italian countryside, Jacek Borcuch’s elegant drama “Dolce Fine Giornata” navigates an aging female artist’s renewed values and (ever so subtly) sexuality against the backdrop of a grand political canvas. We are in the picturesque Tuscany, following Maria Linde (Krystyna Janda); a Polish Nobel Prize winner for literature, leading the kind of life that would gently fall somewhere between a swoon-worthy Luca Gudagnino film and a Paolo Sorrentino satire on the rich and the privileged. Amid dinner parties where bountiful wine and brainy (yet slightly out of touch) conversations freely flow, Maria finds herself at a lonely junction where her family life with her husband and daughter, as well as her friendships, start to inexplicably fade away. Her dissatisfaction intensifies when she finds herself drawn towards a young, hardworking and curious-minded immigrant named Nazeer (Lorenzo De Moor), who seems to fulfill Maria’s humanistic hunger, unattended by her close circle. 

Through the story of Maria and Nazeer, two emotionally charged individuals who unite around their shared views of art and civilization despite coming from different backgrounds, co-writers Borcuch and Szczepan Twardoch investigate timely topics around immigration—among them is the irrational fears that plague not only Europe, but also the entire world. (Look no further than our own administration’s border wall fantasy to see our version of that illogical panic.) The sober script successfully builds Maria Linde as a believable famous poet struggling to reconcile with her fortunate existence in life and gives her apt opportunities to ruffle some feathers. Maria often dissents everyday double standards that we all turn a blind eye to. In that, an interview with a pretentious journalist that quickly turns hostile and a scene where Maria delivers a heated speech to reject her Nobel Prize on the heels of a wide-scale terrorist attack especially leave a mark. I wish “Dolce Fine Giornata” explored Nazeer’s world with a bit more depth and engaged with the immigrant side of the town’s community a little closer. Still, Borcuch’s film asks the right questions about the dangerously escalating xenophobia and leaves a lasting impression with its final metaphoric shot.

Dystopian tales are often clear, transparent renderings of our worst societal fears around justice and liberty. Where your moral alignment should be while watching “The Handmaid’s Tale”, for instance, is hardly ambiguous. “Neon Bull” director Gabriel Mascaro’s near-future dystopia “Divine Love” operates on a slightly trickier foundation. In the Brazil of 2027, an extremely conservative power structure with Evangelical values seems to have answered a deeply religious character’s prayers. She is Joana (Dira Paes), a married woman who exploits her role in a notary’s office to sneakily prevent divorce between consenting couples. Spending her days waiting for a connective sign from God and desperately wanting to conceive a child, Joana resorts to unconventional methods with her husband to have a baby by any means necessary. The couple’s alternative fertility route brings them to a cult-like religious support organization called Divine Love, where passionate, reproductively challenged couples exchange sexual partners during intercourse to achieve a much-desired pregnancy while ignoring the scientific unlikelihood.

Mascaro interprets the world of “Divine Love” through a heated, feverish lens, favoring vibrant colors and soft sensuality while controversially blending the joys of religiousness and eroticism. Underscoring the deep hypocrisies of conservatism that fail to address basic human needs and desires, Mascaro weaves together a complex, nonjudgmental thesis around Joana, bringing forward her ambivalent position as a woman who submits both her spirit and body entirely to God. When Joana finally receives the holy sign she had always dreamed of (even if it’s more than she had bargained for), we sympathize with her struggle as the very system she supports abandons her at the altar. “Divine Love” might be a thoughtful critique of Brazil’s rising conservatism, but its global relevancy is also undeniable. This is a shocking, wonderfully acted and surprisingly erotic film that leaves one with more questions than answers, like any good film that dares to tackle the vastness of faith should.

Part allegory for Columbia’s never-ending political unrest, part a darkly twisted, reality-pushing fairy tale, Alejandro Landes’ “Monos” drops the audience right in the midst of an undefined Latin American locale and time. Taking place entirely in remote mountains and jungles where eight teenage commandos with guns and code names like Smurf, Bigfoot and Rambo watch over a milk cow and a female hostage they call Doctora (Julianne Nicholson) for a collective named The Organization, “Monos” is an unwavering visual and psychological dare that illustrates the surreal nature of war seen mostly through the eyes of the woman prisoner in her survival battle. Landes first establishes the group’s unruly yet methodical livelihood in the way they engage with one another. Relentless and unforgiving, the company only starts to crumble when its members find themselves deeper in the hostile conditions of the jungle after escaping an attack.

This is when Doctora, biding her time until then, takes advantage of the band’s disturbed balance and manipulates her captors with the same emotional (and sometimes suggestively physical) cruelty that she’s been thus far subjected to. Examining the cost of violence and war in the way it erodes human empathy and compassion, “Monos” steers itself to an exceedingly brutal place where logical lines blur and desperate measures take over in desperate times. Nicholson delivers a stunning performance in the demanding shoes of Doctora, playing up her strength, vulnerability and femininity as necessary during her escape. Scored by Mica Levi (“Under The Skin”) with otherworldly sounds (sometimes, obtained by blowing into empty bottles by the composer), “Monos” is a monumentally cinematic experience of lush wilderness and raw emotions.

Perhaps the most controversial film of the bunch, “Queen of Hearts”, directed by May el Toukhy, is poised to become a much debated over title in Sundance. Written by Maren Louise Käehne, “Queen of Hearts” is all about abuse of power and unremorsefully going down the deep end to preserve it when threatened with its loss. In Toukhy’s sensational drama that morphs into a thriller in its final act, Trine Dyrholm plays Anne; a successful lawyer who looks after abuse cases of children and young people. Living an idyllic, affluent life with her husband Peter (Magnus Krepper) in their tasteful contemporary home, Anne seems to have it all until Peter’s troubled son Gustav (Gustav Lindh) turns up to live with them. Bored by the everyday dullness and blinded by a forbidden desire, Anne oversteps an unimaginable legal and moral boundary, seduces her stepson and consequently transforms him into the kind of young victim she’d normally defend.

A much grimmer “Notes on a Scandal” that seeks punishment not in obvious confrontations to plunge one into guilt, but in fatal outcomes and an irreversibly crumbled conscious, “Queen of Hearts” sleekly lures the audience into Anne’s seemingly balanced existence before pulling the rug from under them. Dyrholm gives a brave and shockingly bare performance as a prosperous yet jaded woman and a seductress who’d do anything at all costs to preserve the life she’s accustomed to. Toukhy’s film, mostly set around the minimalist family home and the sun-dappled woods that surround it, is stylishly composed and puts on display a surprising level of sexual frankness. This makes “Queen of Hearts” a challenging sit, especially when Anne’s actions shift from ethically bankrupt to outright despicable, making her one of the most complicated female villains of recent memory.

from All Content http://bit.ly/2CRie00

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Ask D'Mine: Understanding GERD, Which Vitamins to Choose?

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Ask D'Mine: Understanding GERD, Which Vitamins to Choose?

Maybe it's your stomach gone awry, or maybe you're just totally confused about which dietary supplements actually matter... either way, we've got you covered.

We answer all sorts of diabetes-related queries here at Ask D'Mine, our weekly advice column hosted by community educator and author Wil Dubois (also a veteran T1 PWD).

Need help navigating life with diabetes? AskDMine@diabetesmine.com

Lisa from Nevada, type 1 writes: I'm trying to get my head around which vitamins or minerals are especially important for diabetics to take on a daily basis. I hear so many conflicting things. I've been taking magnesium, fish oil, vitamin D3, and calcium. Are these the best choices, or are there others?

Wil@Ask D'Mine answers: You hear so many conflicting things because no one knows which vitamins or minerals anyone should be taking on a daily basis, much less which ones PWDs should be taking.

In theory, we'd get all we need from our natural diet and environment. But of course, McDonalds did not evolve with our species in the Great Rift Valley, so we modern humans could easily be missing out on some things nature would normally provide. I believe that our overly-processed diet does lack trace minerals and vitamins we need; but how much of which ones are missing is waaaaaaaay beyond my intelligence, so I just opt for the duck hunting approach.

OK, so I've never been duck hunting.

But my grandfather used to, and he told me he used a shotgun. The reasons for this are twofold. The first is that it's illegal and apparently un-sportsman-like to shoot a duck sitting on the water where it would be easy pickings. I guess that's where we get the expression "like a sitting duck." The second reason is that no one is a good enough shot to pick off a flying duck with a single shot from a rifle. Instead, a shotgun sends up a cloud of pellets that only need to be in the vicinity of the duck to drop it from the sky to your dinner table. In point of fact, most of the pellets will miss the duck—but enough will hit to do the job. (According to assorted hunting sites on the internet, 3-5 pellets out of 88 in a typical shell will hit the duck—so it looks like 95% of the pellets go to waste.)

So my shotgun for my modern human diet is a multi-vitamin. I'm hoping that that 3-5 of the vitamins and minerals I need will hit their target, while the other 88 I don't need won't hurt me. Too much of some of these trace things can be as bad as too little, and I think some people go waaaaaaaaaaay overboard on vitamins and supplements.

As to the ones you're taking now, how did you make those choices? Fish oil is well studied and has some impressive data supporting its ability to lower cholesterol if you need to. Vitamin D is an important supplement if you are deficient, which takes a lab test to determine. Vitamin D deficiency can cause mind-numbing fatigue, bone pain, and can ultimately lead to rickets—a weakening and softening of bone. This is one of those fun medical adventures I've been on myself and don't recommend—bone pain is amazingly maddening. Calcium is actually the most abundant mineral in the body, and is common both as a native component or as an additive in many foods. So unless you know you're low... And the same holds true for magnesium; I'm not sure you should take more unless you know you don't have enough.

Looking at a "silver" multivitamin you can see that a single tab contains a quarter of the recommended daily magnesium, 100% of your vitamin D, 20% of your calcium, and zero percent of your fish oil. But where on earth do these recommended daily guidelines come from? As best as I can tell, nutrition experts from the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences get together every couple a' years, ingest hallucinogenic mushrooms, and kick around some new numbers. But are they right? Who the hell knows? It's anyone's guess. And other counties have adopted different standards than we have here in the U.S. It reminds me a bit of the medical consensus standards we discussed a while back.

Got some time on your hands? You can dig deeper into what is known and not known about supplements at this multi-agency federal site here.

And speaking of taking too many pills...

Ranelle from Nebraska, type 2, writes: I have type 2 diabetes and neuropathy, and have just been diagnosed with something called GERD and put on yet another pill. I was only told that it is a stomach reflux thing. I'm worried about taking so many different pills... Where can I learn more?

Wil@Ask D'Mine answers: Like I always say, diabetes doesn't like to play alone: it brings all its buddies over to party in your body. For those of you who don't know, GERD stands for gastroesophagel reflux disease, which you can't say ten times really fast, which is why we call it GERD instead. It's a very wicked form of heartburn where digestive juices irritate or damage the esophagus.

The mechanics of GERD involve the lower esophageal sphincter, a ring of muscle fibers that serve like a cork to keep the top of your stomach closed when you're not eating. If it gets lazy, stuff from the stomach can take a wrong turn and head back up-stream. GERD is amazingly common, affecting around a third of Americans once per month, and plaguing around 10% of folks on a daily basis.

I couldn't find any clear statistics that indicate how much more common (or not) GERD is for people with diabetes, but it's associated with obesity. Not to be insensitive, but most type 2s are... ummm... you know... fluffy. And before everyone starts flaming me, I hasten to point out that a great number of us type 1s are overweight, too, along with about a third of the country. Be sure to check out the cool full color animated Fat Map... and watch Colorado be the last state in the Union to fall to fat!

For many people, GERD can be treated with lifestyle changes or over-the-counter meds. On the lifestyle front, things that make GERD worse include citrus, chocolate, alcohol, fried food, fatty food, spicy food, and tomato-based foods. Holy crap. That's, like, the whole food pyramid! Oh yeah, smoking can make GERD worse, too; and avoid taking aspirin and ibuprofen. Sounds like GERD is almost as much work as diabetes. On top of all of that, a host of prescription meds can make GERD worse, including beta-blockers, calcium channel blockers, some asthma meds, some antidepressants, and—ironically—the anti-seasickness family of medications called anticholinergics.

Of course if someone's condition is advanced beyond what can be accomplished with lifestyle changes, there're pills to take — and I know from your letter that this has happened to you. I sometimes get a lot of flak for being an advocate of the just-take-your-damn-medicine camp. But I think you should in this case. Here's why: you told me you have neuropathy. So we know that at least some of your nerves have been damaged by high blood sugar in the past. It's possible that there's also nerve damage to your digestive system that's causing the GERD or making it worse, and that can put your condition outside the scope of what can be fixed with even extreme lifestyle changes. Ya' might have to take a pill.

The GERD medicine cabinet has three different prescription approaches: proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), coating agents, and so-called promotility agents.

PPIs are stomach acid stompers. Think Tums on steroids (metaphorically). The PPI group includes the high-profile purple pill Nexium.

Coating agents are designed to help heal the damage to your esophagus from the renegade stomach acids. Think Pepto on a grand scale.

The promotility agents are supposed to help batten down the hatches by tightening the sphincter muscles and make the stomach empty faster. I understand that they're not too popular with the White Coats as they're side-effect-intensive, don't seem to work as well for most people as the PPIs, and don't play well in the sand box with other medications. Still, they can beat heck out of the next GERD treatment alternative: surgery.

In terms of where you can learn more, I poked around some of the hidden corners of the medical internet for you, and found a group of articles at Emedicinehealth that have received the blessing of the GERD docs. You can learn a lot more about GERD there.

I can understand you not wanting to take more pills, but if your pills keep you healthy and make you feel better, isn't it worth it?

This is not a medical advice column. We are PWDs freely and openly sharing the wisdom of our collected experiences — our been-there-done-that knowledge from the trenches. But we are not MDs, RNs, NPs, PAs, CDEs, or partridges in pear trees. Bottom line: we are only a small part of your total prescription. You still need the professional advice, treatment, and care of a licensed medical professional.

Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.

Disclaimer

This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn't adhere to Healthline's editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline's partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.

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