Thursday, December 20, 2012

Guns and Other Dominations--The Master


Happy December 21, 2012. Are you dead yet? Zombie Mayans eating your guts?

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Note on guns: My brother loved to play all sorts of gun games when we were kids. And sword fights. Roman soldiers. Cops and Robbers. All that.

I liked making the swords and daggers. We would whittle small lumber into weapons. Strap on belts. Run around and actually use the weapons…playing, of course. Careful not to stab. It was fun, sort of. I got bored. I did like running around, though.

My brother liked army toys, army men, especially, and eventually joined the Navy, though during his four years he mostly ran the ship store.  He saw no action. However, the destroyer he was on did have nuclear weapons.

The Navy was not as much fun for him as childhood games.

The amount of war-play that goes on with boys is huge. I saw it first hand. It is no wonder that when they grow up, boys (and girls) like to own guns, shoot guns, kill shit.

I believe the only answer is to change our culture. Instead of, “Bang, bang, you’re dead.”
How about, “Whoop, Whoop, I hit you with a corn cob?”

Couldn’t we somehow teach kids to use that eye-hand thing--the thing that makes you feel good when you HIT SOMEONE with a FAKE BULLET---into simple scoring? Like---It feels so good to hit a target? But more like a ball into a hoop? Or is this Bang-Bang-You’re-Dead thing simply hard wired?  I don’t know.

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I love cults. I loved THE MASTER.  See it. It’s brilliant. It’s maddening. It’s incredibly unsettling. It’s agitating. It’s beautiful. This guy can make a movie. Paul Thomas Anderson. Joaquin Phoenix as the scoundrel-drunk and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the charismatic leader? What more could you want?

I love the ending. It is quiet…and it says it all.

Self-centered, made-up, circular reasoning never looked so beautiful. This movie is something else. I’d give Paul Thomas Anderson the BIG BALLS award. 

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