I
Today’s featured post, on the caste system in India, is by Ridwan. I recommend it and its fascinating videos. I have also seen, out of professional “deformation” as we say, the film of Love in the Time of Cholera. I do not recommend it. It is weak and I feel somewhat polluted by it. I much prefer Volver, which I have seen at last.
Films and other so called cultural events about which I am less sure include I’m Not There, which I recently attended as an activity supporting my permanent Dylanmania. I found it thin, but perhaps I am missing something. I did not like Pan’s Labyrinth when I saw it, but my students explained to me why it was good and they were quite convincing. Have you seen this and if so, what did you think?
II
I was also carried out to the bayous recently, where I saw and disliked a show of the Blue Man Group. The was very self-consciously meta-meta and post-post, so it has to qualify as hip. The Blue Man is not an individual – one can audition to perform as one of many Blue Men, purchasing, as it were, a franchise on stardom.
I realize one is supposed to appreciate this group and its officially wise commentary on modern life. But my first thought when the show began was, is this some kind of Fascist art? Thence the bow to Madame Leni in the title of this post and my question: have you seen the performers and if so, what do you think of their show?
I have one small idea to start the ball rolling: the show of the Blue Man Group is a meta-rock concert with no star, or wherein everyone can potentially aspire to participate in a franchise of stardom. It offers pseudo-subversive commentary on the commercialization of rock. It is a “family oriented” show whereas rock and roll is famously opposed to the establishment.
So this show does not only offer, as it states openly, a meta- or I would say faux rock concert experience. It also offers a faux experience of social commentary and critique. These are my rough ideas so far.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
“The blue man is us. It’s all the beautiful things in people before we decide what sides we’re on,” Galassi said. “It’s what we all have in common – there’s a blue man, an innocence and a curiosity. It’s real life.”
–from the website you linked to
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“If I understand anything at all about this great symbolist, it is this: that he regarded only subjective realities as realities, as “truths”–that he saw everything else, everything natural, temporal, spatial and historical, merely as signs, as materials for parables. The concept of “the Son of God” does not connote a concrete person in history, an isolated and definite individual, but an “eternal” fact, a psychological symbol set free from the concept of time. The same thing is true, and in the highest sense, of the God of this typical symbolist, of the “kingdom of God,” and of the “sonship of God.” Nothing could he more un-Christian than the crude ecclesiastical notions of God as a person, of a “kingdom of God” that is to come, of a “kingdom of heaven” beyond, and of a “son of God” as the second person of the Trinity. ”
–from section 34. Nietzsche, The Antichrist.
http://www.fns.org.uk/ac.htm
I did not like “Pan’s Labyrinth” at all. It traduces on girlhood. It is visually ugly. I can’t understand why anyone liked it.
I adore anything by Almodovar. The film that sticks in my mind is “Talk to Her.” That’s what I call a movie movie.
Riefenstal was a monster. Way overrated. Just so crazy about herself. The perfect Aryan maiden.Self pitying because she was the dream girl of the Hitler crowd. Never repented. Her thing was that she could not be held to account because she was just an artist. She picked up on that German bombast, all right, in “Triumph of the Will”, and in “The Nuba” we get her love of the beautiful primitive. She really makes me gag.
I can’t imagine why anyone would film “Love in the Time of Cholera.” Can’t they keep their dirty hands off it?
I’ll have more to say after I look at the rest of your links.
Trying to bring back the excitement that once was does not work. Imagination is at a premium these days, and yet everyone wants to be an artist.
This thread is extremely interesting but I am temporarily brain dead. Namely: in California and asleep among some mountains. Anyway, for now: tell me more about Pan’s Labyrinth! The students say it is interesting because the heroine wins the fairy tale, so to speak, by disobeying the Faun, not following directions. I found it part hackneyed, and part an assault on the viewer. Interestingly, I had the same reaction to the Blue Man – watching the show felt like being assaulted.
That is well put, Z.
I liked Pan’s Labyrinth. I mean, it was difficult to watch, but I don’t do so well with violent movies. Still, the violence in this movie was tolerable (barely) because it was there for the story and not for the pleasure of the viewer… which isn’t a very good way of saying what I mean.
Anyway the movie was worth it for the bit where they tell the fascist captain that his son won’t even know his name.