Sunday, May 28, 2006
X Men III !!!
Went to watch with Adrian and Jing Zhong. Some thoughts for anyone interested. Ok, perhaps not "some". I'm prone to verbiage you must understand.
The movie resonates with a haunting relevance to our society despite its being completely fictional. Mutants – the aberrations of nature, of society – find themselves stuck in a quagmire of conflicts and dilemmas that each of them endeavours to reconcile in a search for their notions of the self and their respective places in society.
When the US guy (was it the president?) declared to Beast with all the pomp he could muster, “We do not negotiate with these people”, what comes to mind is the issue of terrorism, especially pertinent today in light of all that has been happening in Iraq/America etc.: terrorism to homo sapiens but perhaps heroism to the mutants. When society chooses to deny that unique individuality of a person and chooses to see it as a disease to be cured… …Quite sad, for we see Rogue and several others who either share this sentiment, or are too jaded with their existence as a minority race discriminated against that they decide to let themselves be changed thus. I wouldn’t be critical of them though, especially Rogue (you would go crazy if you couldn’t touch anyone), for it is their choice after all, and they still have to face the opportunity cost of giving up a part of them they’ve lived with for so long, of facing the possibility of disapprobation from their mutant friends and the deep-seated fear and animosity from the human community – I doubt the humans in general would really see them as “real” humans too.
Magneto and Prof X form an interesting pair of dialectics. Both experience the same prejudices but while one of them becomes a humanitarian with a vision to unite the world and all that blah, the other sinks into a darker side of intense misanthropy. The professor dies – poor guy – stupid, respectable martyr. Magneto cannot exist without him for there would be an unbalance of forces and he would plunge into his doom, albeit a metaphorically death of losing his powers (as if we weren’t expecting that when the director prefigures it twice before – where Mystique is “healed” and where Jean threatens injecting him with them). But hey, even Prof X doesn’t really die, if you did stay after the credits at least then to you he doesn’t die.
Magneto represents a group of people who react rather radically under the pressure of social prejudices. A superior/inferior complex develops in him and he sees his differences as indicative of his higher status: society tries to play these mutants down but some develop a psychological barrier and resist this sense of inferiority by constructing a false sense of superiority which they do eventually assimilate. Good for him; he (over) values individuality. But tragic tragic tragic! As Arthur Miller points out in his essay on “Tragedy and the Commom Man” (I’m insincerely sorry non-lit students) “the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing--his sense of personal dignity”. Magneto reaches extremity (I would say his enlisting the aid of Jean Grey can be considered as extreme) in seeking to assert his individuality and it is essentially his own pursuit for a kind of justice; a validation of himself; a reassertion of his rightful place in society that led to this misery. Nothing wrong with that. But society couldn’t contain him and vomited him out – Blurgh! So much for his dignity.
Ok if I were to go on with this tragedy thing then I would like to point out the anagnorisis in Magneto’s life (once again a very insincere apology to non-lit students); the part where he looks up to the sky as an impotent homo sapien stripped of his affinity with magnets (a lovely understatement). There he goes “what have I done *voice quivers for dramatic effect*” The world spins by him literally as he reaches a tragic realisation – “The horror! The horror!” (Ok I should stop indulging myself in histrionics). But yar, the realisation…how painful…like when he tries to move the chess pieces at the end.
There was a momentary impact of psychological forces within Magneto when Mystique was shot by the cure. I think the fleeting expression of horror, shock, fascination, gratitude and scorn on Ian’s face made me respect him quite a bit. These are feelings Magneto might have experienced and it is sad to note that his transient gratitude was quickly displaced with a prejudice of his own he had cultivated over the years. The memory of his experiences with humans resurfaced and battled with his own memory of the woman who had been behind him all this while. To me this fleeting struggle to reconcile them is perhaps one of the few, if not only, emotionally complex scenes in the movie. The dramatisation of Mystique’s fall was to good effect. From the confident mutant she was reduced to a very pitiful, naked, helpless and self-conscious creature puling “Eric…” The irony of his “she used to be beautiful” just…well…rings.
The other scene that continues to linger in my head is the one in which Storm and Wolverine stand amidst floating rocks, leaves and dew. There was a kind of suspension and uncertainty I guess – a sense that our seemingly unshakable foundations and ideas of the world are actually not as eternal and unchanging as we would like to think them to be. Per haps it encapsulates the entire theme behind the movie, as in another scene at the end multiplied in magnitude wherein Jean Grey lifts the seas and everything else around her. Our “immutable” laws of nature have changed. Laws as deep-seated as these seem to be proven as arbitrary and have existed only contingently (Leibniz would disagree but whatever). Yet even after the laws of nature have been moved still the prejudices remain and the inane human conceptions of what constitutes right and wrong, abnormal and normal cling on obstinately and mindlessly.
Proportion, Conversion; Proportion, Conversion: stop doctoring!!!!!! Yahahahahahah *crazy sounds*
posted by Fear no more the heat o' the sun at 2:58 PM
[luvvv.. makes our hearts SING]
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Monday, May 08, 2006
rarr.
well, the 4-day singing marathon has started. and it's really really tiring, i can vouch for that. after the first day i'm already lan diao. so just a friendly word of advice for those of you who like to give 110% for every practice (well, like me ^_^): try to relax a little. get used to singing less during pracs and having reserves. then you can last through the entire 2+hr programme, or the 6 or 10 songs that you have to do during the competition. yep. that's all from me.
posted by ^^" peregrine at 11:55 PM
[luvvv.. makes our hearts SING]
++++++
