CHAPTER ONE, The Tale of Two Brothers and Their Impala 67 .... one film maker covering a thirty year period is about the existential meaning of the .... drug addiction or sexual promiscuity) of these various western cultures to become ...... Science fiction is supposed to imagine what the future will be or may be according.
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SCREEN OBSESSION AND MENTAL ENTANGLEMENT CINEMA AND TELEVISION RECLUSION Published Research (March 2013 to today) and [Reviews (02/02/2016 to 10/24/2018) see annex at the end]
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU Cinema and television are obsessional for me and there is no way to get out of this Post Screen Obsessional Stress Syndrome. I enjoy it so much I could not survive without my dose every day. I found the best description of this obsession in Marshall McLuhan and his extensions of man’s psyche, nervous system, mind and body. The cinema has become a way to discover the world the way it is where I cannot go and in its past reality and its future dystopia or utopia. It provides me with a main way to think and meditate in an allsensorial approach of life. I mean all my senses are at work in such an experience, not the way McLuhan says about television (all your senses have to agree and feel comfortable with what they see at once from the very start) but in my own way: all senses are active all the time on high alert and intensively connected with my thinking virtual device, my mind and my knowledge. It is also the way to experience very deep feelings, emotions, even passions and fears within the time frame of that experience knowing that when the watching comes to an end this intense state of excitement will reach its own closure, though I can reopen it any time by plugging myself into another film, another episode of another series. I have here collected several chapters centering on one series or one filmmaker or any other unitary element. Some of these chapters are in fact short introductions with links to full files in the cloud. You just have to click on the links to go to the files. I have also collected more than ninety reviews of independent films or series not covered here. This set of more than ninety reviews is in free open access on Academia.edu at https://www.academia.edu/37660324/Screen_obsession_REVIEWS Olliergues, France, October 27, 2018 1
Table of Contents ONE SUPERNATURAL, CAR CHASE OR JOY RIDE? Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU & Ivan EVE, Illustrations Annunzio COULARDEAU, Kindle ebook (Amazon) PAGE 4 TWO LARS VON TRIER, TEN TITLES ELEVEN FILMS OR SERIES, AN OVERLOOK, POLITICALLY CONTROVERSIAL OR SEXUALLY AND EXPERIENTIALLY PARANOID, ANTISEMITE OR SOCIALLY IRRESPONSIBLE, Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU (link to Internet page) PAGE 6 THREE TIM BURTON – SEVENTEEN FILMS A VOYAGE TO EREWHYNA INSTEAD OF EREWHON, Dr. Jacques Coulardeau (link to Internet page) PAGE 8 FOUR Sweeney Todd For Ever, Dr. Jacques Coulardeau (link to Internet page)
PAGE 11 FIVE TIMOTHY OLYPHANT – JUSTIFED, Dr. Jacques Coulardeau (link to Internet page) PAGE 14 SIX DEXTER, EIGHT BOOKS AND EIGHT SEASONS AND THE AUTHOR IS PROUD. HE MANAGED TO KILL DEXTER IN THE MOST AWKWARD WAY POSSIBLE LIKE A REAL AMATEURISH ASSASSIN ! ! ! Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU, Dexter's Death is a Cope Out (link to Internet page) PAGE 17 SEVEN DOWNTON ABBEY, BRITISH TO THE DEEPEST ROOTS, Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU (link to Internet page) PAGE 20 EIGHT Stephen King – Under the Dome – A Military-Industrial X-File Plot, Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU (link to Internet page) PAGE 23 NINE Harry Potter LIMITLESS – BORDER FREE – DEBONDED, Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU + Daniel Radcliffe in Equus on Broadway (link-s to Internet page) PAGE
26 TEN BRUNO DUMONT, IL RESTERA TOUJOURS LES 40 VOLEURS, Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU (link to Internet page) PAGE 29 ELEVEN 20 GOOD REASONS TO BE NOSTALGIC IN THE SUMMER, ROBIN WILLIAMS AND MANY MORE, LOST IN A PRISON BREAK, Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU (link to Internet page) PAGE 31 TWELVE TWO SERIES AND TWO FILMS FOR HOT SULTRY SUMMER EVENINGS Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU (link to Internet page) PAGE 34
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THIRTEEN THE 7 REASONS WHY AMAZON IS SUCCESSFUL IN VIDEO STREAMING! BOSCH – FIRST SEASON – 2015; BOSCH – SECOND SEASON – 2016; BOSCH – THIRD SEASON – 2017; BOSCH FOURTH SEASON – 2017; PHILIP K. DICK – THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE – 1962; THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, FRANK SPOTNITZ – PHILIP K. DICK –TV SERIES – 2015; Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU PAGE
37 FULL FILE FOURTEEN Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU, A la rencontre de Jean COCTEAU, Jean COCTEAU revisited, The Godfather of my class in high school, Le parrain de ma promotion d’École Normale, JAMAIS TROP TARD POUR BIEN FAIRE, NEVER TOO LATE TO DO GOOD PAGE 57 FULL FILE SOMMAIRE 1. JEAN COCTEAU – LE SANG D’UN POÈTE – 1933 – (non disponible sauf sur l’Internet) – SCÉNARIO – EDITIONS DU ROCHER - 1999 2. JEAN COCTEAU – JEAN DELANNOY – JEAN MARAIS – L’ÉTERNEL RETOUR – 1943 3. JEAN COCTEAU – LES PARENTS TERRIBLES – 1948 4. JEAN COCTEAU – JEAN-PIERRE MELVILLE – LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES - 1950 5. JEAN COCTEAU – JEAN MARAIS – ORPHÉE – 1950 6. JEAN COCTEAU – JEAN MARAIS – LE TESTAMENT D’ORPHÉE - 1959 7. JEAN COCTEAU – JOSÉE DAYAN – LES PARENTS TERRIBLES – 2003 8. JEAN COCTEAU – ANTHOLOGIE – ŒUVRE ENREGISTRÉE – FRÉMEAUX ET ASSOCIÉS
FIFTEEN CHARLIE CHAPLIN – LES LUMIÈRES DE LA VILLE – 1931-1988; CHARLIE CHAPLIN – CITY LIGHTS – 1931-1988; RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH – CHAPLIN; CHARLES CHAPLIN – A KING IN NEW YORK; CHARLIE CHAPLIN – LIMELIGHT – 1952 PAGE 88 FULL FILE SIXTEEN Sickening rewriting of Little Red Riding Hood by the Donald; MARGARET ATWOOD’S RED RIDING PROPHET; A FEMINIST CRY IN THE DENSEST COLD WAR SITUATION; MARGARET ATWOOD – THE HANDMAID’S TALE – 1985; MARGARET ATWOOD – HAROLD PINTER – FAYE DUNAWAY – THE HANDMAID’S TALE – 1990; POUL RUDERS – TJENERINDENS FORTAELLING – THE HANDMAID’S TALE – MICHAEL SCHONWANDT – ROYAL DANISH THEATER – 2000; Chris Garrard’s musical adaptation, January 2013, three highlights on Youtube; THE HANDMAID’S TALE – SEASON 1 – 2017; Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU PAGE 96 FULL FILE
APPENDIX: THE REVIEWS PAGE 124
FULL TABLE OF CONTENTS
Illustrations cover page and last page Annunzio Coulardeau, (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100005796257934)
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SUPERNATURAL, CAR CHASE OR JOY RIDE? Dr Jacques COULARDEAU & Ivan EVE Illustrations Annunzio COULARDEAU CHAPTER ONE, The Tale of Two Brothers and Their Impala 67 CHAPTER TWO, Hitting The Road CHAPTER THREE, They “Are The Hollow Men” CHAPTER FOUR, Their Number Is 666 CHAPTER FIVE, And Cain did not slay Abel APPENDICES: SUPERNATURAL IS LEADING TO SO MANY THINGS - ELAINE PAGELS – REVELATIONS, VISIONS, PROPHECY, & POLITICS IN THE BOOK OF REVELATION;
- ERNEST ALFRED THOMPSON WALLIS BUDGE –
LEGENDS OF THE GODS, THE EGYPTIAN TEXTS; CAIN;
- BRIAN DE PALMA – RAISING
- PROPHECY COLES – THE IMPORTANCE OF SIBLING RELATIONSHIPS IN
PSYCHOANALYSIS;
- JOHN STEI NBECK – EAST OF EDEN;
JAMES DEAN – EAST OF EDEN; DEAN – GIANT;
- ELIA KAZAN –
- TV SERIES – EAST OF EDEN – 1981;
- JAMES
-JAMES DEAN – REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE
And we went down into the mental maze of this American series that turns the car into the supreme weapon to correct the Creation of God of all the mishaps it went through and all the monsters God himself created along with all the rest. What a sloppy achievement for God and what a reckless endeavor for the producers of the series! And the project of the authors was so phenomenal that it could not in any way go through academic acceptance. The endeavor was supported though for a while by some academic master minds in the field of American series but it could not survive a university reading committee in a public university that was looking for the American-ness of American TV series. This series is far beyond hamburgers, Coca Cola and Bourbon. Miles on the other side of the border of suburban American middle class comfort or mild psychosis. Thriving or smoldering in the outer space of standard normality or even digestible crime. © Jacques COULARDEAU, Ivan EVE, Annunzio COULARDEAU
KINDLE DIRECT PUBLISHING Amazon.com/.co.uk/.fr/.de/.it/.es/etc. Publisher: Editions La Dondaine; 1st edition (March 28, 2013) ASIN: B00C3ODA0S Publication Date: March 28, 2013
$7.25 EUR 6,50
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LARS VON TRIER TEN TITLES ELEVEN FILMS OR SERIES AN OVERLOOK POLITICALLY CONTROVERSIAL OR SEXUALLY AND EXPERIENTIALLY PARANOID ANTISEMITE OR SOCIALLY IRRESPONSIBLE Dr Jacques COULARDEAU https://www.academia.edu/15315513/LARS_VON_TRIE R_AN_OVERLOOK In the cinema I am trying to find out if Marshall MacLuhan was right and what he would say in front of global and universal virtual communication. Would he accept the idea that the cinema or TV camera is only the extension of the human eye? I think he could say a telescope or a microscope are extensions of the human eyr, but the cinema or TV camera (is it the same in both cases?) is the extension of a lot more. Editing, acting, stage and decor designing, music and sound and many other artistic elements do not make this camera a simple extension of the human eye but of the human mind and of the human imagination. It is a lot more than an eye, artificial or not. It is a door to unpredictable communication with the world. What does it mean for the human subject? Lars von Trier is special in that direction. He projects onto his films a Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome of a great originality. He is not able to overcome the idea that man is evil, sinful and that all men and women are dominated, manipulated and commanded by a criminal mind. Is Lars von Trier the apostle of the human slaves, the human beings enslaved to their desires, ambitions, crimes, criminal delights and murderous lust? Lars von Trier is obsessed by sin, death, punishment, and all his films always come to that kind of an end: someone is punished for the evil doing of humanity, or of some people around the main character. We could understand that stance if it came from some sectarian fundamentalist, for example of the Christian Born Again in Jesus Christ, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons or some other affiliation of the Christian faith, not to speak of other religions. That makes some collaborations surprising like the one with Stephen King because Stephen King is strongly optimistic about the future of the world because he believes human beings can face and probably control any nasty negative and morbid situation. In the Dark Tower what is important is not that the last page is the same as the first but that all along the members of the team of adventurous volunteers led by a gunslinger have always been able to step over any difficulty and painful task.
Editions La Dondaine, Olliergues, Sep 1, 2015 Research Interests: Future Studies, German Studies, Marshall McLuhan, Original Sin, Guilt,Future of humanity, WW2, Global Village, and Seven Capital Sins
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TIM BURTON – SEVENTEEN FILMS A VOYAGE TO EREWHYNA INSTEAD OF EREWHON https://www.academia.edu/17238393/TIM_BURTON_S EVENTEEN_FILMS_A_VOYAGE_TO_EREWHYNA_INS TEAD_OF_EREWHON Dr Jacques Coulardeau Abstract: The only question we may ask when watching so many films by one film maker covering a thirty year period is about the existential meaning of the whole set. First let me tell you I do not give a damn about the film maker’s personality or personal data. That he had a bad or good youth with a father who was loving or terrifying;, and a mother who was evanescent or over powering is of no concern to me though we could say hat the virtual “author” of these films obviously has an existential problematic relation with life and death. He will, I guess, excuse his morbidity, his cultish liking of death, his depressive black humor by saying he is a Halloween author. That would be short indeed. That would neglect the audience. The public, and mostly children when the films are not restricted or are Walt Disney films, are bombarded with gruesome juicy corpses in any state of decay, with frightening scaring traumatizing supernatural beings from the other side of life: vampires, werewolves, ghosts, witches and so many other cursethrowers and curse-catchers as if cursing your neighbors was nothing but a game of baseball. But in the end does Tim Burton have a vision of society that could be explained to anyone? I am afraid not. In the name of extreme black somber humor he criticizes, vandalizes and victimizes anything and anyone supposedly sacred in this society, except mind you anything really religious. In other words these horror or suspense stories are the stories of a very faithful choirboy, or choirgirl if they could have girls in that function, who has never been able to take his robes down, probably because that is his only vestment, clothing and he is nude and prudish underneath. In other words these stories, be they morbid, humorous or simply gruesome, are nothing but the expression of his total nudity under his superficial existential circumstantial diapers. He hides behind such ugly stories and tries – at times fails – to make people laugh at his funeral corpselike mind. [...] 9
Research Interests: Terrorism, Horror Film, Horror Cinema, Frankenstein, Werewolves - Trials and Theoretical Demonology, The Fantastic, Clown, Funny Games,Fantastic Literature, Clowning, Funny People, Dracula, The Thriller Genre, Funny, Thrillers, Debunking History, Farces, and Pastiche Villain
Discussion https://www.academia.edu/s/47abc1dd41 Can there be any sense in this farcical grotesque pastiche showered onto the innocently perverse world? Tim Burton turns the whole world into a funeral parlor. And even Alice in Wonderland becomes under his fingers a story of death, of dying, of getting their heads off not with laughter but with an axe. Doesn’t he know that such obsessive references could become traumatic for some children who would experience all that as a symbolical castration? In fact he knows and he must think that these boys and girls who will lose their phalluses (because even girls have phalluses according to Jacques Lacan) in contact with such stories definitely deserve that loss because they have no stamina, no courage, no daring crazy enterprising sense of adventure. If they do not like his stories – must he think – let them get to C.S. Lewis instead of Lewis Carroll Burton. So enjoy hunting the Snark in these pages and you might find a truffle here and there if you have the nose for such nice black tubers, but are they tubers really?
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SWEENEY TODD FOR EVER https://www.academia.edu/18715858/Sweeney_Todd_ For_Ever Abstract: THE BARBER WITH INSPIRED RAZORS He is the sword of God, the fire of hell and the punishment of all your sins and crimes, you, the middle men of the financial moral and hypocritical dictatorship of some kind of aristocracy. That film would have been loved by the hardliners of the communist revolution who would not have seen the poetry but who would have only excogitated in a rush and considered in no time at all the social and political justice in this revolutionary barber who cleans up society in its own blood and feeds the flesh of his own crime to the gullibility and greedy hunger of the masses. If you are not convinced about the poetry, the justice and the revolutionary meaning of this Sweeney Todd, just listen to his hymn, gospel and blues to his own razors.
These are my friends. See how they glisten. See this one shine, How he smiles in the light. My friend, my faithful friend. Speak to me friend, Whisper, I’ll listen. I know, I know – You’ve been locked out of sight All these years – Like me, my friend. Well, I’ve come home To find you waiting. Home, And we’re together, And we’ll do wonders, Won’t we? 12
Research Interests: Criminal Justice, Cannibalism, Judicial Precedent, Serial killers (Anthropology), Corruption, Razors, Social Injustice, Human Flesh Searches,Epistemic Injustice, Meat and meat consumption, Pies, Justice for All, and The Razors Edge
Discussion https://www.academia.edu/s/da25529112 Here we are dealing with a famous myth of serial killing in the name of vengeance, hence perfectly sane and calculated, though it gets out of hand after a while. What interests me in such a case is how the fascination for such crimes and criminals developed in the 19th century, rather at the end pf it. Edgar Allan Poe was still considered as horror, maybe suspense, more than serial killing or crime literature. My question is then to know if this interest in crime is to be connected with a certain development of society or with a certain evolution of human psyche. This means that recent terrorist attacks could be seen in two different ways: either the resurgence of mass violence which was common several centuries ago in feudal or ancient civilizations that were not quite civilized in our modern meaning; or it is the result of the present level of development of western society that incites people who disagree in a way or another with some values or customs (and some of these can be negative and bad, like alcoholism, drug addiction or sexual promiscuity) of these various western cultures to become serial killers, to become multiple killers, to become mass murderers. I have not yet chosen which. And they might be other solutions you may suggest.
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TIMOTHY OLYPHANT – JUSTIFED https://www.academia.edu/19893585/TIMO THY_OLYPHANT_JUSTIFED Abstract: The whole question I am concerned about is whether a TV series, any TV series can be analyzed only at the purely technical, filming, shooting and editing, level or if it can be dealt with as a work of fiction that has to be considered like any work of fiction, as seriously as we would consider Shakespeare or Walt Whitman. I am not satisfied with all such technical approaches that only speak of ellipses and flash backs and flash forwards and the angle of the take or the camera, the zooming details and movements. I am not satisfied with those who consider a TV series, since it has to be popular, as having to be banal, hollow, void, meaningless and not being able to be analyzed the way any other work of fiction would and should be analyzed. I deeply agree with the practice of Great Britain where an actor can – and must or at least is recommended to – have a parallel career on the stage, for TV and for the cinema. I regret the USA do not have that practice. We know the result when we compare British series and American series. What’s more I don’t see why so many directors – and critics – consider film directors cannot direct a TV series, and they generally concede Twin Peaks as being an exception of a rather marginal man in the world of television. That’s grotesque. I watched all these seasons in one go, two episodes per night and I summarized some general ideas only at the end. It is thus a living experience of this series and I think that’s how TV has to be taken, as a living experience. It is not because Dexter was killed – was he really killed – in his TV series that the author Jeff Lindsay does not have the right to keep him alive and to go on with his adventures. And we had already been used with such discrepancies between the TV series and the novel series. Yet a series has a problem with its end. It has to come to an end in some kind of flourish, fireworks, fanfare, brilliant twist. Prison Breaks is one of the best as for that, and yet two years later they are speaking of bringing it back to the screen. How are they going to revive the main character? The actor is available but the 15
character was buried. Sir Conan Doyle has already done that with his Sherlock Holmes that he killed at least once and nearly killed several times to just bring him back to life to satisfy public demand. That was literature you are going to say, and then what! Maybe TV series are also fiction. Let me tell you here that I find it funny when some pretend to deal with history in fictional series and to have a good historian as a guarantee that all they say in the series is pure history, like Un Village Français by Frédéric Krivine and the retired university professor Jean-Pierre Azéma who found a juicy supplement to his retirement instead of teaching a few years more (65 is the sacred age at which all researchers have to retire in France, even in medicine, so that some just move to the USA to go on with their scientific work). Sorry to deceive you Mr Krivine, either you are an author and you respect the rules of fiction, and you work for television and you respect the rules of TV series and that goes against anything having to do with historical truth, especially since there is no truth, there are only points of view and Jean-Pierre Azéma is just one point-of-viewer among many others; or you are a historian and then you should be teaching your point og view about history to some university students. We are not watching your series to have any historical truth, sorry point of view, hammered into our thick skulls. Luckily, otherwise they would reinvent the Bible.
Research Interests: Drugs And Addiction, Southern Studies (U.S. South), Drugs and drug culture, Cinema, Series TV, Kentucky History, Moonshine, Marihuana,Company Coal Towns in eastern Kentucky, Heroin, Alcohol Addiction, Whisky, The Deep South, History of Kentucky, Political Affiliation and Gangsterism, and Timothy Olyphant
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DEXTER
EIGHT BOOKS
AND EIGHT SEASONS
AND THE AUTHOR IS PROUD
HE MANAGED TO KILL DEXTER IN THE MOST AWKWARD WAY POSSIBLE
LIKE A REAL AMATEURISH ASSASSIN!!! Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
Dexter's Death is a Cope Out https://www.academia.edu/20039818/Dexters_Death_i s_a_Cope_Out I discovered Dexter on bus stops in Paris. Advertisements for the series. I was curious. I got the omnibus, the first three novels. Then I was infested and I ordered the first four seasons or so and all the books and since then the sequels and new seasons. I have lost some mental weight with him but I think he is becoming slightly too religious in his sixth season, and what’s more very one-sided, or should I say three-sided? I am not sure since the three religions behind it all come from the same melting pot. What is interesting is the idea that some people have a dark passenger who makes them kill, and that dark passenger is a guest that comes in when a child is traumatized in a way or another in his/her very young age. That’s slightly simple minded. But that creates a good character for a thriller, especially when one of these criminals with dark passengers has been trained or retrained – in order to be refrained – into only killing people who deserve to die because they are evil. I have already seen that in Anne Rice’s vampires, witches and recently werewolves. But what is evil, great master? Evil is what I consider evil, though killing is what makes me full, gives me happiness, and what’s more it replaces any kind of enjoyment. This darklyinhabited social protector comes, or should I write cums, by killing and in killing. The rest is nothing but blah blah to feel better, though he will never tell anyone. 18
And imagine your own sister seeing you in the act ! ! ! Yum, yum, I like that indeed. And pass me the knife over and pass me the salt over and pass me the red blood over. Unluckily it got short lived on TV with its eighth season when he gets “killed” and in fact escape punishment. But he also gets killed in the eighth book and this time sloppily, rapidly, urgently. Killed, disposed of and liquidated. The author is obviously bored with his character and since a character is expendable, let’s kill him and forget about it Shame on you! No author gas that divine right of life and death!
Research Interests: Sociology of Crime and Deviance, Trauma Studies, Police, Psychopathology, Brotherhood, Serial killers (Anthropology), Psychopathy, Florida Archaeology, Post traumatic stress disorder, Serial killers, Florida history, Blood, PTSS, Florida Everglades, Psychological Implications and role of sisters and brothers on identity, and Miami
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DOWNTON ABBEY, BRITISH TO THE DEEPEST ROOTS https://www.academia.edu/22428790/DOWNTO N_ABBEY_BRITISH_TO_THE_DEEPEST_ROOT S
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU This series is a masterpiece in a way, not by its producer but in itself. Note this is true for several reasons, over six seasons of course, six the number of Solomon’s wisdom. 1- The period chosen here is crucial for the modern world. It is when the colonial mind of our European culture reached its summit and started its downfall with the First World War. After WWI colonialism in Europe was finished, even in spite of the Nazi relapse. 2- In Great Britain it was crucial the aristocracy came to terms with the social transformation of women having to be recognized as crucial in society and as having to hold jobs and social positions. Note that could also be true for the whole western world after WWI. 3- In Great Britain it was urgent they came to terms with the Irish question and it was hard in this noble family for whom an Irishman could be a chauffeur but the husband of one of their daughters, of the youngest most rebellious of the three daughters, that was an other story. 4- In the whole world it came to the surface of history that everyone had to have, has to have, a money earning job of some 21
kind and that everyone has to live with the means they are able to earn by their work. The aristocracy has to learn that their mansions are not only theirs but they are the heritage of humanity and as such they have to open them to the curiosity of simple people, and that can become a regular income to take care of this heritage. 5- In the whole world too it is to be assumed that servants are no longer a special class serving the aristocracy – and the rich – in total subservience. Servants could never be the same and the number of servants had to go down and many had to find new social positions for which they were qualified or could acquire qualification, provided education was open to all. It is such questions and quite a few more that make this series a real masterpiece and the production is so lavish, florid, beautiful, extravagant that no one can resist and not push the door or the TV remote control’s button to start the adventure.
Research Interests: Education, Service Quality, Public Health, Ireland, Aristocracy, Hospital Management, WWI, Pig Farming, Universal Primary Education, World War One, Universal Basic Education, Gender and family history; history of subaltern groups such as servants and children; questions of masculinity and fatherhood, Domestic Servants, British Aristocracy and country houses, UNIVERSAL PRIIMARY EDUCATION, and Pig Farming Business Plan
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Stephen King – Under the Dome – A Military-Industrial X-File Plot https://www.academia.edu/27025515/Stephen_King_U nder_the_Dome_A_Military-Industrial_X-File_Plot Abstract: The Queen is Dead, Long Live the Queen Realistic Racism or Racist Realism You have all reasons to be afraid. The world, the cosmos, the universe are against you and you will fail. That’s the absolute pessimism of the series. There is no hope and your victory, bringing a dome down, is only the first step of the final invasion, just like Brexit is the first step towards the absolute homogenization of the world, homogenization in diversity, and not the fake superficial and rather limited diversity of the sexes (only two, more or less) or genders (about at least twelve with all orientations) but the diversity of absolutely all differences seen as an asset for all, including extraterrestrial differences if they exist or appear one day, brought back by some cosmonaut, astronaut or spationaut from the vast cosmos. The novel was quite open on the extraterrestrial dimension. The series has become totally centered on that element. The novel revealed how every single difference could become the cause of some segregation or violence. The series keeps that element but introduces the concept of a kinship, supposedly of extraterrestrial origin, but that is a totalitarian organization: absolute obedience (obey or die) and dependence (be dependent and survive), total submission (submit or die), final sense of sacrifice (be ready to sacrifice your life for the survival of the kinship and survive till the time has come for your sacrifice) The book as well as the series, though the series maybe more, suggests the fact that some people are born with the gene of domination. No matter what circumstances they may find themselves in, these individuals (they are never groups of people and if we have a group it is a group of dependent people with one among them who is the real leader) will always get on top. Successful in second hand business (second hand car dealership), then mayor of the city (or whatever it may be called, first selectman for example), then tyrant of the isolated community, and then after liberation Congressman and if you think of “House of Cards” the White House in perspective. This vision is very common and 24
has neither been proved nor disproved, though some people seem to think you must have suffered in a way or another to develop that mental orientation of a leader. Others think you need to have a special gene somewhere like the Wanderlust gene DRD4-7R. Some also believe these individuals have been inspired by some divine force or cosmic influence, and this last approach has very popular forms like believing it was raining intelligence when someone was born. We are dealing here with some modern science fiction that should bring up myriads of questions beyond simply enjoying the show.
Research Interests: Gay And Lesbian Studies, Horror Film, Science Fiction, Dictatorships, Crime, The X Files, Horror, Fantasy Literature, Children's Literature and Science Fiction, Serial Murder, Tyranny, Special Operations Forces, Drug Dealing, Law Reform, Harm Reduction, and Prisoners Families
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Harry Potter LIMITLESS – BORDER FREE – DEBONDED https://www.academia.edu/27975961/Harry_Potter_LIM ITLESS_BORDER_FREE_DEBONDED Abstract: J.K. Rowling had sworn she was finished with Harry Potter, sworn so loud that everyone knew it was a lie. She tried some other styles but it did not work really. So revive that poor dead and buried Harry Potter the author changes media and shifts from the printing press to the theater stage where she finds two people who are going to help her in that new venture, a playwright and a stage director. The play in London was and is a success but the book, though bestselling is going to be disappointing to the readers who have not seen the play. The moneymaking logic of the venture will lead the producers of the play to releasing a DVDBluray capture of the stage production as fast as possible for the millions of people who want more than a few stage directions. She might be tempted to shift directly to a cinema production but that will frustrate the readers the same way since a cinema production cannot be compared to a play. It is like moonshine and starshine in a fully sunny sky. The film will have to betray the play to be realistic in its special effects. But what I discover is that the author, from the very start, is obsessed by trilogies, triads, ternary structures, and so on.
Research Interests: Literature, Magic, Drama, Theater and film, Harry Potter, Cinema, Popular Literature, Witchcraft (Anthropology Of Religion),Beyond Good and Evil, Dark Triad, Magician, Catholic Trilogy, Triads, Potter Harry and Voldemort, Alternate Worlds, and Black Magick
Discussion https://www.academia.edu/s/80795ca814/harry-potter-limitlessborder-free-debonded Popular literature is the mirror in which the standard literate audience of any country, even the world, is looking at itself. The authors are only the go-between and the intercessors. There is no hope for anyone in this globalized world if we do not have some popular literature, becoming films, TV series and whatever can 27
reach the WIDEST audience that enables people to dream and be haunted by the liberating cathartic vision of a multi-layer world. J.K. Rowling is a ternary mind (probably from too much Christian education), so she sees a world cut in three tiers. On top the muggle world, the one you and I can see everyday. Under or behind the world of wizards and witchcraft, but the good one, that of Harry Potter and consorts. Finally even deeper or farther behind the world of Voldemort, the wizard turned wicked, evil and morbid, the populist wizard calling for the persecution of muggles, the cult of pure bloods , the full domination of everyone by his dung beetles and Shadows of Death. It is a nightmare that we have to keep in mind all the time. It takes very little for this world of evil populist fascistic isolationist and imperialistic policies to become true any time and start a burkini witch hunt. That's why Harry Potter is the catharsis we need for us not to vote for the lethal and death-bringing trompe l'oeil politicians that try to hypnotize us into locking the doors and the windows, even the chimneys of course, to anything that is not pure, meaning purely us and nothing else.
https://youtu.be/pligNfpZJRU
Daniel Radcliffe in Equus on Broadway
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BRUNO DUMONT, IL RESTERA TOUJOURS LES 40 VOLEURS https://www.academia.edu/28846467/BRUNO_DUMONT_IL _RESTERA_TOUJOURS_LES_40_VOLEURS http://www.slideshare.net/JacquesCoulardeau/brunodumont-il-restera-toujours-les-40-voleurs
Abstract: All the films of Bruno Dumont up to 2016. The films show a tremendous gross and perverse reality based on inbreeding, locked up communities, racism and rejection of anything from outside, lack of any education, mental corrugation, psychological and psychiatric distortion. This "reality" is of course only in Bruno Dumont's mind but it finds an audience that revels in the most obscene and gross details that are accumulated on the screen from incest to cannibalism, from jingoism to extreme sexism and genderism. The rhythm is at times so slow that we nearly have some still vision frozen on some of the grossest elements Such films will pass rather fast because they do not even represent a real reality. It is purely fantasized but it pretends by its realistic treatment to be the ["""truth"""]. Except for the last 2016 film whose review is in two languages (French and English) all reviews are in French. Enjoy the difference.
Research Interests: Christianity, French Cinema, Depression, Cannibalism, Islamic Studies, Islam, Cinema, Depression (Psychology), Economic Crisis, Catholic Church History, Hopelessness, No Hope, and Inbreeding
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20 GOOD REASONS TO BE NOSTALGIC IN THE SUMMER ROBIN WILLIAMS AND MANY MORE LOST IN A PRISON BREAK Jacques COULARDEAU https://medium.com/@JacquesCoulardeau/20-goodreasons-to-be-nostalgic-in-the-summer-9e6e33d557a2 They say the summer is the season when people do nothing economically or socially productive, at least of commercial Added Value. But it is also the season when people can increase their own culture, revisit places they have not visited for decades, or simply visit places they have never visited before. This is personal added value that only counts for one’s own satisfaction. But isn’t it interesting to meet people who have that kind of personal added value and are ready to share it? Yes, it is, but it is not that simple. Our memory is too often short-term memory. We remember for a short period of time and then we forget. In fact, this is completely wrong. We are no longer conscious of what we saw, learned or heard but our brain never forgets anything. It only takes a visit back to what was “forgotten” for it to come back naturally, to re-emerge from oblivion. That’s even funnier than that when you visit a city you used to be living in some fifty years ago. It has changed and yet all that comes back to you is what it was and how it was, and you experience the strange feeling of “I just can’t see what it used to be.” Just get on Google’s satellite maps and revisit the streets you used to be living in and walking every day to go to school when a kid. Things have changed tremendously. Do you remember when around Roubaix’s City Hall it was nothing but bare parking lots? Of course, you do, and yet it no longer is there. Twenty-five years makes a real difference. You go there and you will be haunted by what it used to be, and what your feelings and impressions used to be there too when 32
you crossed these ugly bare asphalt surfaces with dozens and dozens of cars parked there. What I suggest here are some classics in films and series and just let yourself slide into it and nostalgically remember what your impressions were the first time you watched them. You will be amazed at how strong your memories are and at the same time you will see things differently because the world has changed, you have changed and things have changed. Strangely enough, under Trump, you cannot think the same way as under Obama or Bush Junior, not mention Kennedy, Nixon or Reagan. Don’t be surprised and enjoy the change and find some new life in the old cup of tea. Or a cup of coffee if you are in coffee rather than tea. Have a good trip back to memory lane. And do not forget to enjoy the nice summer weather we are having right now. It may not last or it may become bad and then worse. Your choice, or isn’t it the choice of some transcending cosmic force? 1. ROBIN WILLIAMS – NATHAN LANE – GENE HACKMAN – DIANNE WIEST – THE BIRDCAGE – 1996 2. ROBIN WILLIAMS – DE NIRO – AWAKENINGS – 1990 3. ROBIN WILLIAMS – MATT DAMON – GOOD WILL HUNTING – 1997 4. ROBIN WILLIAMS – JEFF BRIDGES – THE FISHER KING – 1991 5. WENTWORTH MILLER – DOMINIC PURCELL – AMAURY NOLASCO – WILIAM FICHTNER – ROBERT KNEPPER – PRISON BREAK – SARAH WAYNE CALLIES – THE FOUR SEASONS + THE FINAL BREAK 6. LOST THE COMPLETE COLLECTION
7. DEXTER – BOOKS JEFF LINDSAY – DEXTER, AN OMNIBUS: DARKLY DREAMING DEXTER, DEARLY DEVOTED DEXTER, DEXTER IN THE DARK ii. JEFF LINDSAY – DEXTER BY DESIGN, Bad Blood Runs Deep iii. JEFF LINDSAY – DEXTER DELICIOUS – THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAIL iv. JEFF LINDSAY – DOUBLE DEXTER – HE’S BACK AND DEADLIER THAN EVER v. JEFF LINDSAY – DEXTER’S FINAL CUT – TV MAKES DEXTER CRIMINALLY IMPOTENT i.
8. DEXTER – TV SERIES a) DEXTER SEASON ONE b) DEXTER SEASON TWO c) DEXTER SEASON 3 d) DEXTER FOURTH SEASON e) DEXTER – THE FIFTH SEASON f) DEXTER – THE SIXTH SEASON g) DEXTER – THE SEVENTH SEASON 9. JACQUES TATI – MON ONCLE – 1958 10. JACQUES TATI – PLAY TIME – 1967
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TWO SERIES AND TWO FILMS FOR HOT SULTRY SUMMER EVENINGS Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU https://medium.com/@JacquesCoulardeau/2-series-2films-4-hot-sultry-summer-evenings-3c2c981de28e Do not hesitate. There is always some entertaining distraction in a series or in a film. In this case, it is very bleak. Taboo’s London in 1814 is a dirty, muddy and totally corrupted harbor in the City of London that is nothing but a cesspool, a marsh, a swamp that will never be drained. Sleep Dealer’s Mexico after the final mile of the building of the wall is turned into a virtual reality barn for cattle working at a distance for businesses in the US without ever setting their feet on American soil. A real dream for Trump. Then Good Will Hunter is a hunter all right. He is also the game of many hunters and yet he meets a counselor or headshrink and the two are simple cannibalizing each other. Both are Asperger people, though of slightly different orientations, but yes the older one tries to recapture his youth by mimicking that of Will Hunter, the younger man who vampirizes Sean’s life and he drops out of a mathematical career at MIT to run after a woman who has just left for California, just like Sean twenty years earlier had missed one historic baseball game just to meet the woman he was going to marry, and who is dead now. It is sad and sadder than sad. Finally, to find some renewed energy and taste the salt of the earth you can get with Bosch, Season 4, and if you have not seen the first three do not hesitate and see them all. They are on Amazon Prime. 35
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THE 7 REASONS WHY AMAZON IS SUCCESSFUL IN VIDEO STREAMING! I will take two examples lower down, The Man in the High Castle and Bosch. Amazon is a success for several reasons. 1- Their video streaming is part of their Prime subscription and as part of this prime subscription it is carried by something wider than just the desire to watch videos or films and it leads to something wider than just watching videos and films: a fully integrated commercial relationship. 2- The basic prime subscription at Amazon gives customers such a privileged position that it is justified by this position and is profitable because of it. It covers all transportation and delivery costs of a tremendous number of products, and there is always a good wide choice for those articles who are prime articles. 3- The basic prime subscription guarantees a tremendously fast delivery from “on the next day” to “as fast as can be” via “as soon as available.” And the delivery can be in your mailbox or some other delivery spot at a collecting point of your choice. 4- But the main argument for these videos, theses films, these series, is that the original products signed Amazon are very systematically based on the work of an original author, hence on a literary work of quality, relayed later on by a real team of TV authors to serialize the stories – and expand the stories. 5- There are a few series working like that on common television or channel TV. I can think of Dexter for one example with an original literary author behind, though this series-type is one case or nearly one case per episode, with some longer lines running behind a few episodes and emerging from time to time. Then you can think of the TV series Prison Break or Lost that have one long story that is central, essential and fundamental with some particular circumanstances in each episode but you cannot miss one episode without missing something in the wider picture. 6- Amazon apparently chose a mixture of the two: one main single story per season, a story that comes to an end in the season; some side events, connected most of the time, unconnected at times; some longer situations and stories running from one season to the next. But the main character is the creation of Michael Connelly, and the TV series devlopment of the character is the result of the work of a team of authors.
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7- That gives a perfect result with Bosch. But it also gives a perfect result with The Man in the High Castle, a series that uses the exact same procedure. Here is my coverage of these two series. I will soon bring together the coverage of mine concerning series like Prison Break, Lost and Dexter. If you are really interested in series you can also check "Supernatural" Car Chase or Joy Ride? Kindle Edition, by Jacques Coulardeau (Author), Ivan Eve (Author), Annunzio Coulardeau (Illustrator), ASIN: B00C3ODA0S That’s why Amazon video is going to be a tremendous success: it will make viewers regular customers since they will have to get the prime subscription to really benefit from the best price/quality/value relationship with Amazon Video.
BOSCH BOSCH – FIRST SEASON – 2015 This series is based on two crimes or two criminals and one victim for the first one and many victims for the second one. The first one will manage to escape the police and any prosecution because of the twenty or so years that elapsed between the crime and the present possible prosecution, and other small technicalities. The murderer walks free out of custody. The second one – and main one – is playing with the police, with Bosch himself too little by little makes it a personal chase, hunt and to attract Bosch into a place where he will be shot dead because of the gun he is pointing at the detective, though afterward the gun will be revealed as being empty, not loaded, hence harmless. We actually know the end of both cases from the very start, at least if we know a little bit about American law and American justice. We must also know a little bit about profiling. A serial killer is finding his pleasure in his murders and in his escaping the police and justice, hence direct scrutiny though he enjoys media coverage. That’s the main difference with a mass murderer who wants his actions to be seen and himself to be seen and admired, or hated, it does not really matter which. So a serial killer who starts begging for being recognized and seen and who then enters a systematic and total chase and hunt, a sort of competition with the police or one particular individual in the police, has to be caught because he wants to be caught and he wants to be killed by the police because that’s true sacrifice that justifies his whole quest. He does not enjoy killing anymore but he enjoys the perspective of being killed by the police in his last stand against the 39
world. He is a predator caught in his very last stand against the hunters who have been tracking him. But this series is a little more complicated at other levels. We are in Los Angeles and this is one city that is crucial in modern times because it is a big microcosm that may explain the macrocosm of the USA. First, we have the inner functioning of the police department of this city. The top chief of police is appointed by the mayor of Los Angeles, and this one is elected by the people. Hence the Chief of police or the one who wants to be the chief of police has better be on the side of the winning mayoral candidate. That reveals that such top jobs are politically dominated. This is in many ways a mistake but it is the way it works over there. Note it is slightly better than having the chief of police, or sheriff or marshal elected by the people since then it is populism and demagogy first with the majority “group” in the population, be it racial, sexual, economic or whatever. Second, the inside functioning of this enormous machine is the very negation of any logic and reasonable conception of things. It is ambition everywhere. It is social climbing all the time. And on the other side it is constant menace and endangered defense on the side of the underlings and of course the constant attempt to just do what will satisfy the sharks on top who are constantly after you because in such a situation a “chief” can only work if he has an “enemy” in front of him or her. We are dealing here with a perverted hierarchical two-tier system: you are at the top or you are nothing since just plain under. And that works at all levels of this hierarchy. Third, though this is more or less secondary, the justice system of the USA appears at this level of state justice, hence local justice and not federal justice, as being thoroughly perverted by some regulations that enables any judge to reject some evidence just on the basis of any technicality either in the nature of the evidence or in the police work that led to getting this evidence to the court. The second absolute dictatorship of this system is the compulsory jury in most criminal cases or even civil cases. Then the prosecutor or the defense counselor have to think twice before any question or act since they have to satisfy the jury and that comes with a fair amount of populism and flattery. That gives to the District Attorney an enormous power though he has to be elected and that requires a lot of ^popular flattery to the people and all juries come from these people and represents them. You just add to this the particular divorced life of Bosch and the growing pains of a nearly fifteen-year-old daughter and you can imagine the mess of this Bosch in such a cesspool of a professional and family life.
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The action then is just nicely dynamic and sufficiently violent to be slightly gutgripping. Bosch as the son of a single mother who was a prostitute who was killed when he was twelve throwing him into foster care and other juvenile punishing institution with what he calls the “trunk” where rebellious incarcerated children were systematically beaten. That leads to the worst possible vision of humanity. We are dogs and in us, we have two different dogs. One is good, the other is bad. The one you feed in the end is the one who wins. And then Bosch can explain that he and the serial killing psychopath he is chasing since both were incarcerated in the same juvenile institution with the same trunk, they diverged in the end: he, the detective or police officer, chose the good dog; the serial killing psychopath chose the bad dog. That’s primitive thinking and a barbaric social vision. But that’s how Trump sees the world. I just wonder what is the trunk in which such binary, “bipolar” people have been locked up when young to produce such a caricature of life. But that is in total agreement with the theme song of the series “Can’t Let Go” by the group Caught A Ghost. Corn sugar and caffeine I feel my body in two different places Still playing for both teams Sometimes it feels I was born with two faces I feel the smoke climbing up my cheeks I hear the jokes and I smell the punchlines I lay broken in my bed for weeks My room's too dark and my bed's on the fault line I got a feeling that I can't let go I got a feeling that I can't let go I got a feeling that I can't let go I got a feeling that I can't let go I got a feeling that I can't let go I got a feeling that I can't let go I got a feeling that I can't let go Can't let go Sing a song about heartbreak What do you know about the sweet taste of sadness? I got a name for each one of my headaches What do you know about the thin line to madness? I need a new part with new lines Anything if it's good for your head 41
You can donate your heart to science But it won't bring you back from the dead I got a feeling that I can't let go I got a feeling that I can't let go I got a feeling that I can't let go I got a feeling that I can't let go I got a feeling that I can't let go I got a feeling that I can't let go I got a feeling that I can't let go Can't let go You'll find the sweetness You'll find the sweetness Like me Sweetness Like me Like me Songwriters: Jesse O'Brien Nolan Can't Let Go lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Caught A Ghost is an indie electro-soul band based in Los Angeles, California; The band is a new project from Los Angeles singer, songwriter, and producer Jesse Nolan and kindergarten classmate Stephen Edelstein on drums. Their debut album, Human Nature, was released 1 April 2014. That’s what happens when one is entirely dominated by if not enslaved to one’s own feelings, convictions, unthought and unthinkable deeper motivations that do not listen to any reason or reasonable and sensible elaboration but only to the gut feeling that is the basis of all racism, supremacy and supremacist behavior. Let such a person capture a majority of the electorate and you have a dictator in the making, a white tornado or hurricane building up in the community, in the country.
BOSCH – SECOND SEASON – 2016 The old cold-standing case of the murder of Bosch’s mother when he was young and she was a prostitute becomes solved. A phone call, a visit to a dying old woman who was a friend and colleague to Bosch’s mother, a pseudo, a hotel, a room number, then an old register book from this hotel and some discrete inquiry in the narcotics service of LAPD and he finds the real name of the pseudo, and then some leverage and he finds where he is and is supposed to be. The case can be solved, and closed. 42
The main central case of this season is the killing of a pornography film producer who is, in fact, laundering money with bonds and other manipulations under the radar from Las Vegas where he resides and Hollywood where he more or less works. The money is not clean and when you are dealing with drug money or casino money you have to be careful. He is not and steals from the drug dealer and other illegal financiers. Bad Boy. Dead. At the same time, his wife who is only after her money and would like to get rid of the husband but in a clean way so that she can keep the money is surrounded by a gang of ex-cops and rotten cops for her security. She may have used them too in the field, which means two masterminds for one killing, or more. Dangerous. The drug dealer wants to get his millions back. The widow wants to get the millions, full stop. But the pornographer was going around with a younger girl and he was getting ready to divorce the marital climber who would have gotten little, and marry the younger one. He deposited a big box full of several million dollars in a bank under his name and her name. As soon as he was killed the young girl gets the box and the millions out in a suitcase, gets some refuge time in an Armenian Catholic church in LA, and finally, disappears. You can imagine the wife, the band of rotten cops and ex-cops plus the narcotics dealers all meeting outside the bank on the day the wife can finally ask for the bank deposit box to be open so that she can recuperate the money. Quite a few dead people on the ground and a couple who escape too. The wife manages to get out of custody easily since she did not do anything illegal, but she learns about the Armenian church and that is slightly iffy. She kills the priest who refuses to give her back the money, the little share he actually managed to get from the girl he helped. Then we can let her live the aftermath of it in prison and in court. That might not be that easy to manage to convince her for anything. On the side, his ex-wife being kidnapped with their daughter by a band of narcotics dealers in Las Vegas, some kind of a hardly professional subset of criminals, Bosch cuts it short fast and takes his ex-wife and their daughter to Los Angeles for a few days. He has some information that could help an FBI case be solved. Since his wife has been approached to spy on him, he proposes her to “steal” the information the FBI might appreciate having, and sure enough, the case is closed and the ex-wife manages to get a recommendation to be reinstated in the FBI. She has to solve the problem she has been developing with her current “boyfriend.” Their affair has come to an end but she is slightly too vain and too proud to admit it. But if she is reinstated in the FBI she will have to do something about it. On the other side of rottenness, the election for mayor of Los Angeles is going on. The incumbent is a Latino who does not have a chance to win and would prefer 43
dropping out of it. The main challenger is the white deputy District Attorney, an Irishman by name, who is not very competent except in giving orders that become very dangerous when implemented. The deputy chief of police is a black man and his son manages to be shot within his undercover operation to infiltrate the network of rotten cops and ex-cops when the main man in this network finds out he is wired through his watch. Bosch will get the chap and clean up the plate after the out-of-the-bank shooting. But in the meantime, the incumbent Mayor appoints the deputy chief of police in the top job with the understanding that he will resign after a while after having appointed a Latino in the deputy position so that when he resigned this Latino will be able to be appointed chief of police. White supremacy at times has some strange sidelines. This series is good because of the rather clear unity of a season. It is also interesting because all elements are connected, be they personal or professional or circumstantial. Nothing is outside the main tense and dense atmosphere of the police and the criminals. Some may regret there is little about the rest of the world, but it gives the series a palatable and drinkable cocktail taste that is not a mixture of badly blended elements, like too much lemon juice and a lot of sugar to cover it up. You will enjoy the title song of course. It hasn’t changed, nor the opening credits with their inverted half frames. We can rest a little before getting to the third season where a few things and a few people are going to change.
BOSCH – THIRD SEASON – 2017 The Third season is centered on a team of ex-military people from special forces, decorated and all who became US-military-money, embezzlers. They hi-jacked money in Afghanistan and also all kinds of goods, including weapons, that they sold on the black market in the US. A fairly complicated system that gets money and goods out of the way in Afghanistan and then repatriates it illegally on various military transport planes back to the USA for black market exploitation. This case is closed up by Bosch but with a lot of effort from others, effort and pain, wounds and spilled blood. It reveals that military dependency among some over-trained elite special forces is so strong that they can move from the war battlefields to criminal life as if they were one and only one. Yet one of them is the officer, the commanding officer and when the other members of the team feel that commanding officer is cheating them in a way or another, in military terms they would say betray them, then they will not rebel, not kill him. They can’t because of his rank and their military subservient obedience, but they will definitely trap the commanding officer before he kills them, because they know the betrayer is also a killer and that they have to accept to submit to his command, even if it is to die or be executed.
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The second case that is solved is the murder of Edward Gunn and this murder leads to the main culprit, the brain of the whole case which has to do with using prostitutes slightly violently which means they are killed by that rough intercourse because the real pleasure of the pervert is to have that intercourse with a dead body they have just killed and is still warm. But the brain of that network of perverse killers is a filmmaker and he has to decide to get rid of one member of the network because he has become sloppy and also slightly overzealous in his killing spree or sprees. But the filmmaker has been chased by Bosch. So he will manage the whole thing so that Bosch will become a person of interest, if not the main suspect. He overdoes it in a way by inserting in the crime scene an owl which is a direct allusion to the Renaissance painter Hieronymus Bosch. Too subtle to be true. The filmmaker must have watched Seven too often. This subtlety leads to curiosity, and then to pointing out a cultivated brain that cannot be the underlings who have as much culture as an army of snails. What is surprising is that the Los Angeles PD does not seem to be using profilers that would enable them to narrow their chases and to become one-pointed, which is the only guarantee they will not waste their time on side-cases, on side-tracks, on fake possibilities. And it is true they do waste a lot of time and effort beating about the bush and running around. This also lets the various detectives alone in front of the cases they work on. There is no leading force. And the natural shortcoming of human nature comes back all the time: hostility, competition, jealousy, suspicion, ambition, social climbing and grade climbing, etc., among the various members of the department. And this is all the more effective in ruining the effectiveness of the teams when we take into account the political pressure on the Police Department, the vanity of those who have rank and want to control and command all those under them with just plain authority and no real police work or police thinking. Not to speak of the political dimension, since he is elected, of the Attorney General in his office and position who wants to make things easier, with many deals, saving court time and court cost, etc., all perfect arguments to win his re-election, or at times an election to a higher job like Mayor or Los Angeles. Then the personal dimension of police work for the individuals who are in the Police Department, but also for their families, spouses, and children, is often reduced to a side effect of police work that cannot be avoided and that typically comes from fear which is a normal human reaction, so they say at least, from women as wives and from children. This is an obvious sexist position because fear is not really human, and spouses should be supportive instead of being “hostile” when it is not even purely aggressive more or less blackmailing the cop in the family. It is difficult to explain to kids what it means to kill someone, even if he is a criminal. It is difficult to explain anyone that there must be people who are ready to even sacrifice their own lives for the security of the community. But it is true the press, and other media, are not helping since they systematically put on the public place things that should be nicely hushed up, not erased or 45
totally banned, but muted down. In the name of the freedom of expression they even at times put many officers and policemen in danger by revealing their identities and the details of their operations. That’s far beyond simply blowing whistles about police brutality, police illegal action, and even police corruption. In fact, they make police work more complicated, more difficult and more dangerous. It is true along that line that the fact the various branches of police work have little communication among one another does not simplify police work since it is quite common to have some police officers confronted to some covert underground and unpublicized police operations leading to one policeman arresting another when it is not shooting to kill. Absurd and yet quite common. This third season keeps some cases and situations unsolved, which is normal since then there will be a fourth season.
BOSCH FOURTH SEASON - 2017 The action is packed, the suspense is intense, Los Angeles is a city of crooked and corrupted powerful people, in this case mostly men. He who has the money reigns unchallenged, except of course by Bosch. A black lawyer is going to court on the following day and for that isolates himself in an apartment at the top of the Angels Flight Railway. When he reaches the top he is shot dead. The case was going to bring up into the light a young black man who was purely tortured in the restroom of some garage or service station. There was a camera behind a mirror and the lawyer managed to get a copy of the film. That was the main piece of evidence he was going to show in court to stigmatize the extreme violence – closer to torture than to violence – of LAPD officers with young black men. At first, one of the violent cops is framed, including by a member of Bosch’s team who is in connection with Mr. Big Money Investor in Los Angeles, a supporter of the Latino Mayor. You will get the details about how to reform the police, how to fight against corruption, how to stop and contain violence on both sides and crime on the side of the gangs. In four words: “NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!” Bosch’s wife, an FBI undercover agent working as a “gamer” in some legal or illegal gambling games, is killed by two motorcyclists one day after she took part in a game with a Chinese citizen, and the game was interrupted for security reason by the Chinese. She was the victim of some organized Chinese gang but the top man of the gang directly responsible for the crime manages to leave the country just in time, hardly one minute before his plane could be stopped on the tarmac. The main case though is the assassination of the black lawyer and the corruption that is revealed behind and how the corrupted killer wanted to give the populace a dirty, killing, rotten cop to be cut up into pieces for the mental satisfaction of their 46
death instinct. Unluckily the Chief of police and Bosch’s team are doing their jobs, one by providing the press with some information about the corrupted Bradley Walker and the Mayor, and Walker is trapped by Bosch in some underground railroad he used to go from a fundraising in a downtown hotel to the Angels Flight Railway to commit his crime and kill the lawyer. It sounds though a little bit tight to be possible, but Walker recuperates the murder weapon from where he had hidden it and he reveals that he killed Bosch’s mother because she was a prostitute he probably used and she probably tried to raise her price, in other words, to softly blackmail him. What’s good about this series is not that every case reveals some corruption and some criminal minds. Nothing new under the sun, or the moonshine. But it is the rhythm, the tempo and the personal dimension Bosch and some others invest in their police life. It sure is not easy to be a cop in modern society.
THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE PHILIP K. DICK – THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE – 1962 (December 23, 2015) The novel from which this TV series is adapted is an old dystopic novel of 1962, entirely positioned in an alternative world in same year. But first of all let’s speak of the novel itself. This book is an old book, in fact a classic, rather confidential at the time of its first publication and even when recently republished because of its theme, but it has been brought to new awareness in the public because Amazon has just decided to produce an adaptation of it for video streaming. Is it a good decision to bring it back to fame, because it will be fame this time? We’ll see right now why it should not have been kept more or less confidential for more than fifty years. The genre is difficult because it is RETROSPECTIVE SCIENCE FICTION. Science fiction is supposed to imagine what the future will be or may be according to one or two parameters that are changed in our present in absolute or relative value. Of course you can cheat the way “Back to the Future” did at least three times, and we may regret it does not go on at least one more time, but things are what they are and life is a truck full of manure as we all know. Here the author imagines in 1961-62 what the world would have been if in 1945 Germany and Japan had won the war. It is the basic hypothesis so many people work in their minds or in bar and saloon discussions: what the world would be if… And there is no limit to these IF’s. As they say in Paris the Eiffel Tower could be put in a bottle if… and the same for the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building in New 47
York if …, and for the >Washington Monument in Washington DC if … And after every presidential election in the world people imagine what it would be or would have been if the loser had won. Follow my eyes and read my lips. But what is the main and basic interest of this book? First the world is cut in two with Japan on one side and Germany on the other side. The Communists have disappeared due to a strict eradication of all Slavs by Germany. The racial problem has also disappeared by the elimination of all black people in the world and first of all in Africa by Germany. In the same way the holocaust of Jews was continued though here the Japanese refused to cooperate. Imagine the world without Black people even in Africa, with maybe a few survivors surviving since it would be their only function as absolute slaves to be used, and abused, by any one of a paler complexion including children and even babies. I regret the book does not expand on this subject as much as it does on Jews, and particularly the few Jews who managed to get out of the influence of Germany and be de facto protected by the Japanese. But the most frightening part is that Germany is in the hands of the few people who were leading Germany in the war. In spite of the fact that Hitler is dead in 1961, it is his direct lieutenants and underlings that have taken over and are fighting for dominance, Goebbels first of all. The book is quite explicit on what happens in such a totalitarian state that is like a pot with a dozen spiders locked up in it who can only manipulate the crowds of people through the glass wall that protects them (the leaders only) and of course they have their legions outside that can eliminate all those who have to be eliminated for the dominating underling(s) to remain dominant, and at the same time these legions can go on some blood baths of their own for the fun of shedding and drinking the red stuff we call blood and they call a delicatessen though the Jews would consider it to be the soul of man, the divine part of man. And yet the book is fascinating for other reasons. It explores the very contemplative and oracular culture of the Japanese who have some kind of portable oracle in two volumes they consult regularly to know the meaning of the present and try to cope with the future. It provides the believers with Hexagrams that are both sibylline and enlightening in the shape of Haikus of six or about six lines. But the inner psychology of these Japanese is explored in depth: contemplative, extremely civil and polite, courteous and maybe even servile, but never revealing their true feelings and avoiding expressing any emotion and sensation. Cold for sure and yet tremendously empathetic, but unexpressed and unaired empathy. It is this very quality that makes them resist the German Nazis because they are able to communicate with the deepest forces in the universe, what every geological element carries, atomic forces and the power of any design, the design of molecules, or human-created designs and there we have a tremendous surprise. Two people launch a jewelry production unit in San 48
Francisco and the main worker of the two is a Jew running incognito under a false name and under the de facto protection of the Japanese, a little bit more at the end of the book. And it is this Jew who is the creative jeweler, the creative artist, the craftsman who is producing with his hands the world of tomorrow as the Japanese main character tells us over and over again. That would symbolically tell us the German Nazis tried to eradicate the Jews because they represented the future and the Nazis represent the past. Simple, symbolical but is it really cathartic? There I cannot answer because anti-Semitism is slightly more complex than just a simile or a metaphor. It has to do with the fear that developed somewhere in the Middle East some 10,000 years ago in the vast confrontation of three cultures emerging from the ice age and trying to invent the future of the planet: The Turkic peoples, the Semitic peoples and the IndoEuropean (Sumerian) peoples. We are still living on that heritage, the heritage of an anthropological rivalry that became the differentiation of three linguistic families, and of three cultures with three religions, and what’s more the Semitic community got split in two along a social differentiation (exploiter and exploited) and a religious antagonism (Judaism and Islam). Christianity is the third religion branching out of Judaism and it is more or less assumed as part of the European, hence Nazi definition. The Christian religion is vastly absent from the book. Of course in this book the Arabs and beyond them the Muslims are totally ignored and unconsidered, being replaced by the fourth human group that never had any role to play in the previous triad, the Buddhist and Confucian human family who are also from another linguistic family, isolating languages, here represented by the Japanese. That’s the main element that is absent from this book. Northern Africa, Egypt were essential at the end of the Second World War and still enormously influential in 1962, but yet the Arabs and Muslims are just not considered at all. That’s the shortcoming of the book in our modern times because since 1960-62 it is the community that has emerged most strongly from the initial triad and today the Asian isolating family is no longer represented by Japan but China. But of course this book did not aim at telling us its future which is our present, but only the present in 1961 if … The last element I would like to show is that the book has no end, precisely because of what I have just said. It does not open on the future in 1961 so it cannot have any end. It is coming to several open-ended dead ends, open-ended because we can imagine what we like, but dead ends since it does not tell us anything about what may happen after 1961. That’s the doom of retrospective science fiction. It is dramatic, frightening but at the same time it leads to no vision of the future. It is some kind of castrated science fiction that cannot tell us anything about our real world, the world of the real readers of the book, particularly those who read it a long time after the writing time. And that’s where the video adaptation will be fascinating since it will have to be adapted for today’s 49
and tomorrow’s publics. But we’ll have to wait for it to be available in the whole world to add a paragraph, in fact a few paragraphs, to this review. Let the few who can access the video adaptation celebrate! God Bless the Child! (Review published on December 23, 2015, See further down for the original)
FRANK SPOTNITZ – PHILIP K. DICK – THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE – 1962 – TV SERIES – Seasons 1 & 2 – 2015 (Review August 10, 2017) The TV Series, the Blessed Child I have just mentioned, whose first two seasons are only available so far, is an expanded vision and the expansion seems to be changing quite a few details, especially since television must be visually acceptable and it does not have to be logically or even concretely possible. The Man in the High Castle is apparently making disturbing films that describe the world the way it developed after the victory in WW2 against Germany and Japan and his “studio” is a big warehouse somewhere in the San Francisco area, at least till he decides to move on and to torch his film producing “high castle.” We are not told then where he decides to move to. The second remark is that the TV series can easily jump from San Francisco and the Japanese Pacific states, to New York and the Greater Nazi Reich and to Berlin, the capital of this Greater Nazi Reich. To enable this, some characters have to be invented and the series becomes the story of these characters. In San Francisco the central character is Juliana Crain who moves to the Neutral Zone, a buffer zone between the Japanese Pacific States and the Greater Nazi Reich, in fact Canon City, Colorado, after her sister is killed by the Japanese police, leaving her partner Frank Frink behind. She will come back and later she will move to New York as a refugee from the Pacific States where she is wanted by the Japanese. Frank Frink is also essential in San Francisco because of the role he plays little by little with the resistance against the Japanese. Frank is surrounded by several other characters and he is very complex since he is connected to the Japanese mafia who manages to liberate him and later his friend Ed McCarthy from the accusation of having shot the Japanese Crown Prince, though it was done by a Nazi agent. And on the Japanese side you have one more character (apart from the police and the general organizing the production of an atom bomb), the Trade Minister who is lost between the reality of these Japanese Pacific States, the recollection of his wife before this time (she is dead) and for him the alternative world of Kennedy’s USA in 1962 and the Cuban crisis with the Soviet missiles. He is able to navigate from one level to the other thanks to some kind of typical Zen meditation.
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San Francisco then is divided between the Resistance, the Japanese and the Americans who try to survive and strive in this colonized situation, with the Neutral Zone behind and direct bus lines used by the Japanese to transport uranium from the Neutral Zone to San Francisco, unprotected and thus killing all the “American” passengers, which does not count for anything for the Japanese since they are “American” and this ruse enables the uranium to be transported unnoticed by the Germans. New York is not in any way simpler since it has been totally expurgated like Europe of all the Semites, meaning the Jews, and of all the Blacks since all Africans have been sent back to Africa which is a big German colony, meaning a slave territory for all kinds of work. The main Nazi master of New York and the American Nazi states is a certain SS Obergruppenführer John Smith, and his family. We discover them from the inside because of Juliana Crain who is integrated into the Nazi elite by John Smith himself because he thinks she has some inner information about the resistance and the man in the high castle. The Nazi Reich practices total eugenics and John Smith’s son has the genetic disease John Smith’s brother had. He has to be eliminated. But John Smith is cheating with the system with the plan of sending his son on a patriotic trip in Latin America where he will be kidnapped by some “Semites” and thus will be able to remain alive. But John Smith is trying to get another young person, Joe Blake, into the position of a special agent but it is difficult because when Joe Blake was sent to Canon City in Colorado he came across Juliana and another Nazi agent who had the order to get the film she was transporting and kill her. Joe Blake saves her and the result is the death of the Nazi agent and the delivery of the film (in fact two because Joe Blake was also transporting one to enter in contact with the resistance) to the resistance represented locally by a black man, Lem Washington. And after that “encounter” entirely based on unshared secrets they go their separate ways though the next mission of Joe Blake will take him to San Francisco to recuperate another film and he will escape the Japanese police thanks to Juliana who manages him to be taken on a boat to Mexico, and he will escape the resistance thanks to a Nazi bribe of the resistance people on the boat who are transporting him to Mexico, but the bribe delivered by air is poisoned and the black people on the boat will all die, both as criminals and as black people, hence duly eliminated from the surface of the earth. The Nazis seem to be waiting for the death of Hitler to seize power, or rather to start fighting to seize power. Himmler started too early so he is killed by Smith. But Hitler does die and the power chase starts. Berlin is of course the heart of the Nazi Reich and we discover it by following Joe Blake there. He is summoned to Berlin by his father, the main minister of the Reich, and he discovers little by little who he is. Not only the son of his mother who eloped to New York with him, but the genetically selected son of both his 51
parents who could have been raised in a special institution to produce the next generation of SS fighters if his mother had not escaped away from Berlin, probably though not entirely clear with the assent of the father who was already an important character in the Nazi regime. He thus discovers his birth place and early infancy institution (closed by then in 1962) with his father, who he hates. But his father puts a young woman his age and coming from the same selective program as him, and the chemistry of hormones and common experience brings them together and though at first he wants to go back to New York where he has a life partner and a son, he decides against his father’s will, after he had been appointed acting Chancellor waiting for the official announcement of Hitler’s death, to stay and be sworn into the SS. He thus endorses the role he was playing in one of the films he has actually viewed and delivered to the Nazis: in this film he is an SS officer who shot the surviving resisting people after San Francisco is flattened by an atom bomb, and among those he shot there was Frank and several other people we have met. In our present times of tension between the USA and Asia (not only North Korea but the whole of Asia, including Russia of course) the debate about the use of nuclear weapons to conquer the half of America either the Japanese or the Nazis have or do not have is particularly welcome. In the film the Germans already have atom bombs, but the Japanese have to build one and they received the blue print of such a device from a German high-ranking officer who betrayed the Nazi Reich, in the name of equilibrium, peace and the deterring power of nuclear weapons, under a fake British identity and then a fake Japanese diplomatic visa. He was captured in New York by John Smith. The series is slightly light on the question of the use of nuclear weapons that have not been used yet in the dystopic world, though the Japanese Trade Minister in his “trip” to our real world in 1962 discovers about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They deal with nuclear warfare in the dystopic world as a matter of need: strike first and conquer the Pacific States, first meaning before the Japanese have a nuclear weapon of their own. Of course the real world of 1962 and the possible use of nuclear weapons against Cuba is set in parallel with the dystopic world. There is a peace movement in the USA against the use of nuclear weapons in Kennedy’s time, but there is no peace movement in the dystopic world, just a resistance that is not really concerned by the use of nuclear weapons and on the Nazi side the inner conflict to seize power after Hitler’s death. We have to think twice about this debate. Only terroristic and dictatorial regimes can actually use nuclear weapons in the TV series, and yet it is the USA who used such weapons twice in our real history. True enough Truman had not been elected President but only Vice-President under Roosevelt. But will a fully elected President of the USA use nuclear weapons against a country that has managed to develop such nuclear weapons and the ICBM necessary to deliver them who knows where? Will a fully elected President of the USA take the risk of a nuclear war just because one little country is challenging his narcissistic authority? I will 52
not answer these questions. Only history will answer them though it is obvious for anyone who is not a narcissistic person that negotiating is always, absolutely always better than using force: think of Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria to wonder what two wars started to answer a foolish terrorist attack from Al Qaeda have led to. Certainly not a viable and sustainable democratic and peaceful situation and the coming decade or even decades will not solve the “problem” and bring things back to “normal.” In short then a visionary novel turned into a deeply reflexive series that we should all watch to just ponder on the question of the use of force and forceful ideologies to conquer the world rather than the use of negotiations to develop and improve the same world.
THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE – FRANK SPOTNITZ – PHILIP K. DICK – THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE – 1962 – TV SERIES Seasons 3 – 2018 (Review October, 2018) We finally got that third season and that was a great event, an immense pleasure and some kind of absolute satisfaction. Of course the man in the high castle is a reference in the background and this reference becomes more and more metaphorical but he is a concept, the concept that something exists in man that is so irrepressible that no matter what, when and where it will find its way out and express itself publicly even if in some clandestine way, meaning anonymous as for the author who is running away from some kind of repression. The previous themes are all furthered but in some kind of science fiction that is becoming more and more dystopic as it progresses, and yet maybe with a little bit of hope fluttering around in our minds. John Smith becomes the top Reich’s Marshal for America after eliminating some other plotting ambitious politicians and military people who found out how he was planning to get his son to South America to help him escape his euthanasic future because of his genetic disease. We remember that the young man decided to deliver himself to the eugenic units to implement his belief in racial purity. In this season they turn him into a Nazi hero who knew how to take a decision when time was up for this decision. Himmler has taken over the Great German Reich after various episodes with Joe Blake’s father who took over from Hitler at first but is proved a traitor with the help of his own son who is forced to reveal whatever they want to know about his father. By them we mean Himmler of course who is not plotting but only reestablishing the truth and justice, isn’t he? Joe Blake to prove himself and that 53
he is pure and faithful has to shoot his own father tied up on the execution pole his eyes uncovered and open, a sort of sacrificial ritual. Joe Blake is then integrated into a death squad that is sent to New York and then San Francisco to execute all German defectors and the Japanese Trade Minister who is in a way an obstacle to Himmler’s objective that is to conquer the Japanese empire and have a universal German Reich. But Juliana, Joe’s old girl friend from the first season, sees through him and she manages to reestablish the relationship with him in order to get close and one day to cut his throat. Once an anti-Nazi forever an anti-Nazi. It is revealed little by little that the disease John Smith’s son had is running in his family and his two daughters are coming of age for testing and the mother cannot accept it and she will bring her resistance, her refusal to the point of escaping from her husband with the daughters. That will ruin John Smith’s family basis that is so important for a Nazi leader, though Himmler does not seem to have a family.
To integrate America into the Reich they have to bring the world to a new year zero, Jahr Null, and to celebrate this event in New York they destroy the Statue of Liberty but the festive demonstrations in the street are turned into a cover for some resistance people to shoot Himmler down, though he does not die at the end of the season. You can imagine the panic and the frenzy of the Nazis in such a situation, perfectly ambiguous between fear and ambition. On another side Frank who had disappeared for a short while is found again in some haven in the neutral zone, hiding and devising a logo for the future, a logo of a sun rising that brings hope to those who see it, though some see it as a sun setting with the same value. The sun of Japan will set soon and the sun of America will rise again. But Frank is finally captured by the Japanese chief inspector who had killed several members of his family but had let him go. This 54
time he beheads him with his samurai sword. Frank is saying some Jewish prayers because in the haven where he hid, most people were Jews under the disguise of a Christian community, and Frank had been able to join the religion of these refugees. This Jewish theme is very present all along as some recollections of the past holocaust that is still going on in all possible ways since killing a Jew is not a crime. It is only an act of justified cleaning. That brings the films that are like the secret messages of the man in the high castle to the people to call them to fight for their future and freedom. These films in black and white provide a vision of an alternative world, in fact the real world as we know it, and all those who watch the films including John Smith who has been entrusted with searching all the films Hitler had collected for some kind of truth or meaning, recognize themselves and people they know in roles they do not remember and can’t imagine since they only know the world in which they are living under the yoke of Germany and Japan.
That duality is exploited as proving there are two layers at least in reality, the one you know and another one, deep under, in which someone who has exactly the same identity as you is living a life of happiness and freedom. This is amplified with the belief on the side of the resistance that there is an entry way somewhere and it is in the old coal mines of Pennsylvania. Juliana and others will go after this entry way to get into this other world. On the other hands the Nazis are developing exactly the same idea in the same old coal mines but they are building the gate to this other world and texting the technology to enable someone to cross with sacrificial volunteers; At the end 55
of this season they reach partial (25% and one person out of four) success. Himmler pushes forward to do more and faster. The intention is not clear on the side of the Nazis. Why bother about this other dimension of the universe? There is some kind of blind belief that science has to be developed even if there is no real practical end in the invention or technology you develop. But all along the way there are casualties and only one touch of hope in San Francisco where Frank is avenged by his friends who manage to hang a big Rising Sun banner on the Colt Tower but it is a touch of hope that does not seem to lead very far but this touch of hope plus the shooting of Himmler who is still in surgery brings some kind of cliffhanging suspense for the fourth season. The question about the identity of the Man in the High Castle is maybe purely superfluous and some even imagine he is Hitler himself who is maybe dead in this reality but alive in the other black and white reality, the reality of the defeated Germany. Once again Hitler is imagined by some as still alive in our world that is the black and white world of the series. But can we cross to the other side by mental means rather than technological means? More corn to harvest and grind into flour in the fourth season.
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Dr Jacques COULARDEAU A la rencontre de Jean COCTEAU Jean COCTEAU revisited The Godfather of my class in high school Le parrain de ma promotion d’École Normale JAMAIS TROP TARD POUR BIEN FAIRE NEVER TOO LATE TO DO GOOD SOMMAIRE 1. JEAN COCTEAU – LE SANG D’UN POÈTE – 1933 – (non disponible sauf sur l’Internet) – SCÉNARIO – EDITIONS DU ROCHER - 1999 2. JEAN COCTEAU – JEAN DELANNOY – JEAN MARAIS – L’ÉTERNEL RETOUR – 1943 3. JEAN COCTEAU – LES PARENTS TERRIBLES – 1948 4. JEAN COCTEAU – JEAN-PIERRE MELVILLE – LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES - 1950 58
5. JEAN COCTEAU – JEAN MARAIS – ORPHÉE – 1950 6. JEAN COCTEAU – JEAN MARAIS – LE TESTAMENT D’ORPHÉE - 1959 7. JEAN COCTEAU – JOSÉE DAYAN – LES PARENTS TERRIBLES – 2003 8. JEAN COCTEAU – ANTHOLOGIE – ŒUVRE ENREGISTRÉE – FRÉMEAUX ET ASSOCIÉS
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La pornographie surréaliste jouait à grands flots avec les métaphores spermiques JEAN COCTEAU – LE SANG D’UN POÈTE – 1933 – (nondisponible sauf sur l’Internet) – SCÉNARIO – EDITIONS DU ROCHER - 1999 Il s’agit là d’un film d’auteur, qui plus est de poète, ce que certains appelleraient « a genre movie » parce qu’en anglais le concept de film d’auteur n’existe pas. Mais ? soyez sûr qu’il s’agit de genre, sans théorie mais avec tous les détails nécessaires. On ne devrait pas autoriser les poètes à faire des films et qui plus est à parler d’eux-mêmes. Mais de toute façon ils feraient des films et ils parleraient d’eux-mêmes. Ils sont des êtres sans lois ni règles et ils ne savent pas ce que non veut dire. Qui plus est ils sont obsédés par leur passé, leur enfance, leurs souvenirs, en un mot leur nombril (ah ! s’ils pouvaient en avoir plusieurs !)et ils ne savent pas faire mieux que de l’étaler, comme la confiture, mais à la différence de la confiture, plus on en a moins on l’étale. Cocteau est de ces poètes là et s’il osait il prendrait des bains de confiture.
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La première caractéristique est que le poète étant un être qui n’utilise qu’un seule média pour s’exprimer, les mots, qui en principe sont nécessairement alignés de gauche ou droite ou de droite à gauche selon les langues, parfois de Haut en bas, mais la plupart du temps, presque toujours dans un seule sens, ils sont plus qu’heureux de n’utiliser qu’une seule couleur c'est-à-dire à la fois l’absence de lumière et la pure lumière qui mélange toutes les couleurs. Ainsi ils choisissent le noir et blanc qui couvre toutes les teintes de gris, du blanc jamais parfait au noir jamais absolu. Et puis Cocteau étant obsédé par sa jeunesse, son enfance, les drames, traumatismes et autres incidents et cauchemars que l’on peut imaginer dans cette période tendre, il ne peut pas s’empêcher d’étaler tout cela car il est lui, encore lui, lui-même et même lui encore, en bref un nombril hypertrophié qui mesure tout à son aune ombilicale. Et justement le nombril c’est comme la confiture, il faut l’étaler, mais à la différence de la confiture, voyez ce qui précède. Imaginez alors l’épaisseur de la couche de confiture ombilicale que l’on a dans ce film et le freudien est pratiquement signalé d’une étoile ou d’une flèche.
La statue ne peut alors qu’être grecque puisqu’il n’aime que les profils grecs. Elle est sans bras et c’est une femme : suivez donc mon regard jusqu’au Louvre. Victoire, vous la voyez d’ici. La moitié du film sera centré sur un jeune homme à moitié nu ou habillé si 61
vous le voulez de la taille aux genoux, cela pourrait être pire, comme des épaules aux chevilles, ou bien encore mieux (imaginez ce que ce serait), et il fera sa gymnastique musculaire sur les murs d’un hôtel où il rencontrera des hermaphrodites, des fumeurs d’opium et autres créatures de la nuit mentale. Cachez ce sexe que je ne saurais voir, dirions-nous, mais Cocteau lui dit toujours : Révélez cette orientation sexuelle que je n’ose même pas cacher, même si je ne la nomme jamais. On passe alors à une troupe d’élèves en pèlerine qui se lancent des boules de neige. L’un d’eux sera étranglé avec un cache-nez, censure de fellation. Un autre sera tué par deux boules de neige. Censure à nouveau de quelque projection phallique. Puis les lieux des crimes se transforment en théâtre baroque avec des gens en costumes bariolés tout de gris du 18ème siècle, un couple qui joue aux cartes comme si c’était un strip-poker qui ne se déshabillerait pas, un ange noir (tiens cela me rappelle une chanson qui viendra bien plus tard) nu et luisant, sauf du nombril à l’aine, viendra récupérer l’écolier mort en se plaquant sur lui ventre covtre dos, suivez mon regard à nouveau, et en l’absorbant littéralement comme une éponge absorbe votre café répandu maladroitement sur la table.
Et on arrive malencontreusement à la fin finale qui revoit la statue revenir d’on ne sait où et repartir puis rentrer pour finalement sortir une bonne fois pour toutes. La femme sans mains hante Cocteau, à croire qu’il n’a jamais connu de femme avec des mains 62
où qu’il a toujours interdit aux femmes de le toucher. Freud dirait qu’il y a là un signe de plus, j’ai bien dit de plus, d’une relation pervertie avec la mère, à rapprocher de la Vierge Marie qu’il fusille deux fois. Et comme le film s’est ouvert sur une immense cheminée industrielle, plus phallique que cela je meurs, il finit avec la même cheminée mais qui s’écroule dans un effondrement de poussière, plus éjaculatoire que cela je meurs à nouveau. Certains diront cependant que cela révèle le manque de Viagra, la carence de testostérone. Le résultat est le même, le rabougrissement vers le bas de la hampe dressée d’un drapeau qui se met en berne.
Ce film n’a pas plus de valeur que d’être une vaste métaphore filée et suivie sexuelle d’un genre qu’on dira plutôt gay, pour ne pas dire homo, avec la syntaxe surréaliste des années 30 sous pression de la grande crise qui bien sûr n’arrive pas à trouver sa solution en France. Cela a tellement vieilli que pour le faire revivre il faudrait un miracle. Le scénario que nous avons ici, en plus des descriptions scène à scène, nous assène un corpus de notes de Dominique Haas et de l’auteur qui sont pour le moins sensiblement vaines : « J’ai voulu prendre mon film de face et sans art. Mais si le cinéma interdit les déformations dans l’espace, il permet les déformations dans le temps. Une histoire de mon enfance me 63
hante toujours. On la retrouve dans quelques unes de mes œuvres. Un jeune garçon blessé par une boule de neige. DansLes Enfants Terribles, l’enfant ne meurt pas. Dans mon [ce] film, l’enfant meurt » (page 66)
La page 66 est une page privilégiée puisqu’elle est la page du baiser, en contraste avec 69. Mais quelle allusion directe à un viol, au moins traumatisant sinon mortel ! « On ne peut pas raconter un film pareil. Je pourrais en donner une interprétation qui m’est propre… » (page 84)
Mais non Monsieur Jean Cocteau. Lorsque, l’acteur à moitié nu ou un tiers vêtu se lavant les mains, voit apparaître une bouche dans sa main droite, il l’embrasse d’une part, puis la promène sur son torse nu, avec arrêts à chaque sein et puis la main descend en 64
dessous de la ceinture à la limite inférieure de l’image et l’image disparait sur cette directe désignation d’un onanisme à la fois manuel et buccal. Vous n’avez plus rien à dire Jean Cocteau. Tout est dit par vos images.
De l'Éternel Retour au Testament d'Orphée, une descente aux enfers JEAN COCTEAU – JEAN DELANNOY – JEAN MARAIS – L’ÉTERNEL RETOUR – 1943 Ce film est un classique qui a été tourné et produit pendant l’occupation de la France par les Allemands. Ce n’était pas une période bien favorable pour le cinéma. Pour comprendre il faut se souvenir que Tristan et Iseut est un grand thème romanesque, théâtral et musical européen qui plonge ses racines dans la tradition celte de la Bretagne, la Cornouaille, le Pays de Galles et l’Irlande, et dans la tradition dite anglo-normande du fait des écritures romanesques du 12ème siècle en français normand. Mais cette légende, ce thème, ce mythe disent certains a été adopté par les diverses traditions germaniques grâce à la version d’Eilhart von Oberg de la fin du 12ème siècle, la version de Gottfried von Strassburg de 1210, la traduction de la version de Thomas en 65
norrois en 1226 et bien sûr l’opéra de Wagner en 1865, pour n’en citer que quelques uns.
Sur ce sujet éternel qui existe en versions écrites puis en versions musicales ou dramatiques depuis le 12èmesiècle et est le résultat d’une tradition celte d’abord et au-delà au moins indoeuropéenne, couvre au bas mot 25 à 30 siècles, dont les quinze premiers sont les siècles de gestation et d’émergence suivant plusieurs lignes de développement dans diverses communautés même si les communautés celtes semblent avoir été le nid ouesteuropéen que le développement anglo-normand après la conquête de l’Angleterre par Guillaume le Conquérant en1066 a relayé pour l’entier du continent européen.
Le défi que Jean Cocteau et Jean Delannoy se posent en l’année 1942-43 c’est de couler le mythe dans le monde quasi moderne du 20ème siècle. Il a bien sûr besoin de changer quelques paramètres mais reste plutôt fidèle à la géographie générale de 66
l’histoire. Marc est donc un « baron » moderne qui vit dans un château féodal aménagé et qui règne sur un vaste domaine terrien, avec probablement des affaires en ville pour lesquelles il s’absente régulièrement. Il héberge une branche parallèle de la famille autour d’une sœur et de son mari qui ont un fils nain. Le nain est donc naturel. Il a plus de vingt ans et il se comporte en véritable espion et même saboteur de la vie des gens qui l’entourent, tuant ici un chien, espionnant tout le monde et il finira par tirer un coup de fusil mortel sur Patrice. Cette situation est renforcée par l’allusion au qu’en-dirat-on de la communauté du village. En face il y a une île sur laquelle vivent entre autres un pêcheur brutal et ivrogne appelé le Morholt qui a des visées sur une jeune femme orpheline, d’origine norvégienne, Nathalie. Le neveu de Marc, Patrice, veut remarier son oncle et il choisit cette Nathalie qu’il amène lui-même au château pour lui permettre de fuir le Morholt.
Patrice est clairement chassé du château, mais il emmène Nathalie avec lui. Marc la récupère et Patrice se tourne vers un ami d’enfance qui est garagiste dans le village. Là il rencontre sa sœur, aussi appelé Nathalie, qui essaie, avec l’aide de son frère, de mettre la main sur Patrice. Cependant Patrice est attaché à la première Nathalie, l’épouse de son oncle. Il veut la revoir une dernière fois avant d’épouser la seconde Nathalie, et c’est le drame. Le nain qui avait versé le « poison » du vin herbé dans les verres de Nathalie et Patrice un soir d’orage tire un coup de fusil sur Patrice, un coup de fusil qui sera rapidement fatal. Juste le temps de rentrer sur l’île. Patrice demande à son ami Lionel d’aller chercher Nathalie 67
dite la Blonde pour qu’il la voie une dernière fois avant de mourir avec la convention d’une écharpe blanche ou d’un fanion de couleur noire. Nathalie dite la Brune a entendu et elle annoncera quand le bateau arrive que le fanion est normal et rouge ce qui signifie que Nathalie la Blonde n’est pas à bord. Patrice « ne peut pas retenir sa vie plus longtemps » et il meurt quand Nathalie la Blonde débarque avec Marc et Lionel. Nathalie la Blonde rejoint Patrice et s’allonge à côté de lui et meurt à son tour. Quatre siècles avant Roméo et Juliette.
Ce film fait en noir et blanc et avec peu de moyens dans une période sombre de guerre est un vrai succès car il joue sur le jeu des acteurs, un jeu relativement rapide et expressif qui donne au film une intensité dont il a besoin pour qu’on suive les conventions émotionnelles. Jean Delannoy possède déjà bien son métier et est capable de diriger ces acteurs avec la nécessaire autorité et humanité. On a un film qui est à la fois conventionnel mais expressif sans tomber dans le sentimental facile. Il est vrai que le rôle de Gertrude, la tante, et de son cher bambin adulte, le nain Achille, font beaucoup pour donner du rythme et de la vigueur cruelle à des situations qui auraient pu facilement sombrer dans le liquoreux, voire le larmoyant. La situation moderne mise en avant est aussi crédible car il existe encore aujourd’hui dans certaines zones montagneuses ou reculées d’Europe, et en fait très proches par exemple de chez moi dans le Massif Central où le film a été tourné en ce qui concerne le 68
château, des situations qui seraient tout à fait similaires, même avec la télé et l’internet. L’homme est un animal très conservateur au niveau de ses émotions et de ses passions.
Le dernier point sur lequel il est possible de faire une remarque concerne bien sûr l’orientation sexuelle de Jean Marais et de Jean Cocteau qui donne au script des valeurs ambiguës devenues aujourd’hui légèrement humoristiques. Il est bien sûr qu’en 1943 l’orientation sexuelle de l’acteur et de l’auteur du film n’était pas connue du grand public et donc ces bouts de phrases du script qui ont un double sens ne l’avaient que pour les gens de l’équipe. Cela me permet de dire que Jean Delannoy que j’ai connu comme président du Syndicat National des Auteurs et des Compositeurs et qui était un chrétien clairement défini, dirons-nous, a été un réalisateur dans le cinéma qui n’a jamais hésité à travailler avec des gens que certains auraient pu éviter et à toucher des sujets parfois fortement difficiles comme l’homosexualité adolescente dépeinte par Roger Peyrefitte dans ses « Amitiés Particulières » à une époque où l’Assemblée Nationale votait un amendement dit Mirguet qui criminalisait toutes activités homosexuelles quelles qu’elles soient en 1964.
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Un film donc qui ne dépareille pas avec les autres œuvres de la vaste épopée tristanienne.
JEAN COCTEAU – LES PARENTS TERRIBLES – 1948 La situation de base n’a pas changé cinquante-cinq ans après l’écriture et la première production avec Jean marais. Pas de surréalisme déplacé, pas d’effets sur-dramatiques inutiles. La situation rien que la situation, seule et sans aucune déviation ou sans aucun divertissement.
La situation est une situation de drame au pire et de comédie au mieux de boulevard. Un jeune homme de 23 ans tombe amoureux d’une jeune fille de vingt-cinq. Mais cette jeune fille a une 70
relation avec le père de ce jeune homme, parce qu’il est totalement négligé par sa femme, la mère du jeune homme qu’il a épousé par dépit plus qu’autre chose alors qu’il aimait le sœur de cette femme, donc sa belle-sœur avant même de penser amourette avec celle qui deviendra sa femme et la mère de son fils. Tout tient dans une seule question. Quand le père va-t-il accepter de dire la vérité et donc de perdre sa petite amie au profit de son fils ? Le fils est typiquement œdipien parce que son père est insignifiant et a laissé son fils développer une passion excessive pour sa mère qui a compensé la distance du père par cette relation œdipienne avec son propre fils.
Le fils finit par vouloir rompre avec ce cercle vicieux et à se libérer de l’emprise maternelle et de l’insignifiance du père sans savoir qu’il littéralement castre son propre père. Plus freudien que moi tu meurs. C’est la tante, belle-sœur et sœur qui sauve la mise en finissant par faire en sorte que le père accepte de dire la vérité. C’est alors que la comédie à la Labiche tourne au mélodrame car la mère alors s’empoisonne et meurt devant son fils, son mari, sa sœur et la jeune fille en question. Ce film se termine avec une scène trouble entre la mère morte et le fils et une déclaration 71
ambiguë de celui-ci qui laisserait entendre que la relation entre le fils et la mère n’était pas totalement maternelle ou filiale.
Ne pas s'y tromper: c'est un récitant qui tire les ficelles JEAN COCTEAU – JEAN-PIERRE MELVILLE – LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES - 1950 Le film le plus décadent qui puissent être jamais fait sur des adolescents avancés en âge, ici Paul et Elizabeth ou Lise. Pas de père, une mère grabataire qui leur meurt entre les doigts. Ils vivent dans un capharnaüm infâme rue du Rocher dans ce qui avait été un appartement parisien de luxe. Ils s’attachent à un copain de Paul, Gérard, qui vit avec son riche oncle et n’a donc pas de famille directe, comme le Tristan de la fable. 72
Lise aura une courte période comme modèle de mode, suffisamment longue pour ramener une certaine Agathe dans le groupe. Puis elle recrutera aussi un riche Américain juif Michael. Lise l’épouse avant un voyage sur la Côté d’Azur bien sûr mais il mourra dans un accident de voiture entre Cannes et Nice. Elle hérite d’un palais à Paris et d’une vaste fortune et elle devient veuve comme je ne sais qu’elle mante religieuse, ou est-ce une araignée ? La bande emménage dans le palais déserté. 73
Le jeu devient alors complètement pervers de la part de Lise. Tout avait commencé avec une bataille de boules de neige dans laquelle un élève brutal et dominant avait envoyé une boule de neige en pleine poitrine à Paul qui en tomba malade. Cette brute de cour d’école est viré de l’école à laquelle Paul n’ira plus jamais de toute façon. Après la mort de Michael, Gérard dans un voyage rencontre cet élève dénommé Dargelos (Serait-ce une allusion à Roland Dorgelès, romancier contemporain de Jean Cocteau et membre de l’Académie Goncourt, et donc une sorte de règlement de compte ?) et celui-ci lui donne une boule de poison ramené d’un pays lointain, boule de poison qui sera mis an trésor de Lise et Paul. 74
Lise veut marier Agathe à Gérard contre leurs vœux car Agathe aime Paul et Paul aime Agathe. Elle réussit si bien dans sa manœuvre que le mariage est annoncé. Son objectif est de garder Paul pour elle seule. Une nuit plus tard Paul mange le poison de Dargelos qui ainsi aura tué son camarade avec une boule de poison après l’avoir réduit à la maladie parasitaire avec une boule de neige. Devant ce drame Lise alors tire une arme, explique sa frustration puisqu’elle a perdu le seul homme qu’elle aimait, d’un amour on ne peut plus coupable non pas parce qu’il était incestueux mais parce qu’il causa la mort de Paul qui en aimait une autre en dehors de toute relation incestueuse. Elle se tire une balle dans la tête et le mélodrame pervers est terminé. Que dire de ce délire surréaliste ?
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D’abord qu’il n’est possible que parce que l’on traite ici avec des gens désœuvrés dans la classe supérieure ou au moins moyenne supérieure qui ont perdu toutes attaches familiales normales ou directes. Cocteau est obsédé par Tristan et Yseult et il recrée des personnages qui vivent dans des situations similaires de déracinement familial. Paul-Tristan n’a pas de parents, orphelin de père et mère. Lise-Yseult même chose. Il suffit d’introduire des doubles dans ce miroir pour que tout explose. Lise-Yseult se mariera d’abord avec un riche jeune homme d’au-delà des mers, qui plus est juif, qui mourra rapidement d’un accident de voiture comme Hyppolite l’amant de Phèdre. Lise-Yseult peut alors travailler sur le couple dans son miroir pervers d’inceste inavoué. Elle marie Gérard-Tristan qui n’a qu’un riche oncle (le roi Marc) derrière lui comme toute famille à Agathe-Yseult venue de l’extérieur de la structure de base. Elle trahit ainsi le vrai amour d’Agathe-Yseult et de Paul-Tristan causant la mort de Paul-Tristan par empoisonnement comme le vrai Tristan et la mort de Lise-Yseult sur son corps par balle auto-infligée, presque comme la vraie Yseult.
Et tout cela pour garder son frère dans sa coupe amoureuse sans qu’on n’ait jamais vu le moindre débordement sexuel, mais le sexe est la chose la plus simple du monde à cacher même et surtout en plein cœur d’une foule, raison de plus dans un film où on ne voit que ce que l’on veut bien nous montrer. 76
Je ne dirai rien sur l’auteur car cela n’a aucune valeur. Je ne psychanalyserai pas l’auteur. Mais la société qui produit de telles histoires est malade. En 1950 la maladie était profonde. Les frères ennemis qui avaient conquis le pouvoir après la deuxième guerre mondiale se déchirent comme des chiffonniers à la fois criminels et indignes. Ils étaient trois originellement. Les gaullistes ont été marginalisés à Colombey-les-deux-églises. Les communistes sont devenus l’ennemi intérieur à détruire de quelque façon que ce soit. Le Rubicon a été franchi en 1947 avec une grève des mineurs perdue et suicidaire menée par les plus extrémistes parmi les extrémistes communistes qui vont recommencer en 1948. Les socialistes triomphent dans ce bourbier sépultural avec les morceaux de centre qu’ils peuvent trouver et quelques pionniers gaullistes qui mettent leurs pions sur l’échiquier pour préparer leur grand coup qui viendra en 1958.
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Dans ces luttes fratricides parfaitement incestueuses dans la langue populaire qui emploie des métaphores sexuelles, malgré le plan Marshall et la reconstruction et bientôt le démarrage économique il ne reste devant nos yeux qu’un cloaque dans lequel seuls les pires araignées d’eau, les pires piranhas sont capables de survivre et la morale ne triomphe que quand le piranha assassin se suicide après son crime qui ne lui sera donc pas salutaire.
Plus glauque que moi tu meurs, mais aujourd’hui le film a perdu beaucoup de sa signification.
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Il n'y a pas plus orphique que Cocteau JEAN COCTEAU – JEAN MARAIS – ORPHÉE – 1950 Voilà un petit film intrigant plus qu’autre chose. Avec les vieux mythes grecs ou autres il semble qu’il suffise de les reprendre et de leur donner de nouvelles couleurs, même en noir et blanc, pour que ce soit une nouvelle sauce, une nouvelle soupe, une nouvelle potée, auvergnate bien sûr. Comme le dira si bien Jean Cocteau lui-même et en personne dans le Testament d’Orphée neuf ans plus tard : « C’est Iseult. Elle est sur tous les bateaux du monde. Elle cherche à rejoindre Tristan. » Il a tout compris, ce Jean Cocteau. Notre amour pour la mort est l’amour de Tristan pour Iseult. Et il ne se demande même pas « jusqu’où on peut aller trop loin ». Cela me rappelle un certain Daniel Mesguich qui racontait qu’un jour une étudiante du conservatoire lui posa justement cette question, et il lui aurait répondu : « Ne t’en inquiète pas. Je te dirai quand ce sera le cas. »
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Et donc la mort apparaît tout de noir vêtue, dans une Rolls Royce noire, mais j’ai bien peur qu’il n’y ait pas d’autre couleur, même pas du gris anthracite. Elle récupère qui elle veut, comme ça, par caprice et sans ordres. Cela lui coûtera cher ? Bien fait la mort. Elle communique avec l’au-delà par des messages des morts aux morts ou des morts aux mourants, comme si c’était la BBC et « Les Français parlent aux Français. » Et le dialogue est fait de bouts de rien et de tête-à-queue multiples qui tiennent du petit chien de Chopin. Il finira bien par se la mordre la queue en un onanisme canin bien juteux.
C’est un peu dommage car les insanités que l’on peut entendre dans la rue tous les jours comme : « Les hommes reviennent toujours, ils sont tellement absurdes. » vous débarquent dans les oreilles à chaque réplique. On en mourrait de sourire jaune et de rire violet. Alors Eurydice mourra. Alors Orphée la suivra. Alors Orphée obtiendra leur liberté à condition qu’Orphée ne regarde jamais Eurydice. Autant demander à la pluie d’être sèche ou à un lapin de pousser des ailes.
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Bien sûr qu’il suffira alors d’un regard dans un rétroviseur pour qu’Eurydice reparte et il suffira encore d’une émeute de gamins qui cherchent un autre gamin pour qu’un gitan à la tête de la foule tue d’un coup de feu mal placé le pauvre Orphée qui est aussitôt récupéré par la mort et ses larbins dans la Rolls Royce de madame. Celle-ci, bonne enfant, fera en sorte qu’Orphée remonte le temps jusqu’à avant sa mort et avant celle d’Eurydice et les voilà à nouveau réunis. C’est charmant. C’est surréaliste à point, comme le bifteck que l’on mange avec des frites et de la mayonnaise. Ou peut-être est-ce à en serrer les poings de désolation devant une telle naïveté.
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Tout cela en 1950 était peut-être le bon vieux temps d’avant la guerre. Mais aujourd’hui c’est une époque historique révolue et que nous ne voudrions pas revoir. Aujourd’hui on sait que tous ces délires ne sont que les conséquences néfastes, les symptômes cruels du stress post traumatique (PTSS comme ils disent dans les séries américaines) de la vie car la vie est un traumatisme permanent que seule la mort peut guérir. Il faut voir ces bouts de poésie surannée au moins une fois dans sa vie et puis les oublier. Ma promotion d’Ecole Normale avait en 1960 Jean Cocteau comme parrain et nous vivions sous un de ses profils grecs et une citation de Jean Rostand.
« La science a fait de nous des dieux avant que nous méritions d’être des hommes. » C’était un monde aujourd’hui disparu et que je ne regrette pas. Il était beau mais d’une beauté à la fois pauvre et traumatisante. J’en ai encore quelques cauchemars, et ce ne sont pas des souvenirs, et il faut que je me dépêche de les écrire pour qu’ils ne soient pas d’outre-tombe. Je les ai d’ailleurs promis à mon assistant.
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De l'Éternel Retour au Testament d'Orphée, une descente aux enfers JEAN COCTEAU – JEAN MARAIS – LE TESTAMENT D’ORPHÉE - 1959 Ce film est un film surréaliste décalé dans le temps d’au moins trente ans. En 1959 il fait déjà un peu vieilli et aujourd’hui gentiment ringard. Il est comme le testament de toute une période, une époque, et d’ailleurs il reprend un film plus ancien « Orphée » (1950) et un autre encore plus ancien « Le sang d’un poète » (1930). Mais comme un témoignage de ce monde qui en 59-60 bascule complètement en France avec de Gaulle, la guerre d’Algérie qui devra se finir rapidement, un moralisme montant exacerbé, un intégrisme religieux qui semble ne pas vouloir comprendre le besoin de changer, et tout un nombre de corporatismes qui bloquent, freinent ou gèlent l’évolution sociale, etc.
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Il est nécessaire de prendre ce film comme une suite d’images, de vignettes sans véritable ordre ni logique. Ce sont des impressions qui se succèdent portant et portées par des souvenirs, des réminiscences de films et évènements anciens, d’œuvres passées et d’écritures des décennies précédant la seconde guerre mondiale. Il y a une bonne dose de nostalgie dans ce film, la nostalgie d’un homme qui trois ans plus tard quittera ce monde sans vraiment voir ce qui est en train de naître. Il est donc descendu en enfer, a voulu en remonter mais est arrivé alors dans un monde qui ne le comprend pas, qui ne le voit pas, qui l’ignore et il découvre qu’il est invisible et c’est un personnage d’un de ses films anciens, peu importe le quel, qui le tire hors du monde, l’emporte dans la roche de la montagne où il ne sera plus qu’une présence dématérialisée, virtualisée dirions-nous aujourd’hui. Et il est vrai que Cocteau est bien présent aujourd’hui dans d’assez nombreuses niches virtuelles, mais encore une fois comme une voix éternelle qui nous vient du passé et qui témoigne que l’humanité est une continuité sans autre profondeur que le temps qui passe, l’âge qui s’accumule et les émotions qui ne changent jamais mais s’érodent avec les ans, s’effritent avec les décennies.
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Ce film en noir et blanc avec deux tâches de couleur rouge à la fin est un petit moment d’évasion de ce que le monde actuel est, de distanciation du monde virtuel dans lequel nous vivons. Un moment de repos même peut-être
Des parents terribles avec une mère maudite en plus JEAN COCTEAU – JOSÉE DAYAN – LES PARENTS TERRIBLES – 2003 La situation de base n’a pas changé cinquante-cinq ans après l’écriture et la première production, mais on est à la télévision, ou dans de la fiction pour la télévision digne de ce nom. Pas de surréalisme déplacé, pas d’effets sur-dramatiques inutiles. La 85
situation rien que la situation, seule et sans aucune déviation ou sans aucun divertissement. La situation est une situation de drame au pire et de comédie au mieux de boulevard. Un jeune homme de 23 ans tombe amoureux d’une jeune fille de vingt-cinq. Mais cette jeune fille a une relation avec le père de ce jeune homme, parce qu’il est totalement négligé par sa femme, la mère du jeune homme qu’il a épousé par dépit plus qu’autre chose alors qu’il aimait le sœur de cette femme, donc sa belle-sœur avant même de penser amourette avec celle qui deviendra sa femme et la mère de son fils.
Tout tient dans une seule question. Quand le père va-t-il accepter de dire la vérité et donc de perdre sa petite amie au profit de son fils ? Le fils est typiquement œdipien parce que son père est insignifiant et a laissé son fils développer une passion excessive pour sa mère qui a compensé la distance du père par cette relation œdipienne avec son propre fils. Le fils finit par vouloir rompre avec ce cercle vicieux et à se libérer de l’emprise maternelle et de l’insignifiance du père sans savoir qu’il littéralement castre son propre père. Plus freudien que 86
moi tu meurs. C’est la tante, belle-sœur et sœur qui sauve la mise en finissant par faire en sorte que le père accepte de dire la vérité.
C’est alors que la comédie à la Labiche tourne au mélodrame car la mère alors s’empoisonne et meurt devant son fils, son mari, sa sœur et la jeune fille en question. Ce film se termine avec une scène trouble entre la mère morte et le fils et une déclaration ambiguë de celui-ci qui laisserait entendre que la relation entre le fils et la mère n’était pas totalement maternelle ou filiale. C’est bien sûr extrêmement bien joué dans un décor réel tout à fait convaincant. De la belle ouvrage.
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CHARLIE CHAPLIN – LES LUMIÈRES DE LA VILLE – 1931-1988 Ce film est évidemment un classique, un classique du cinéma muet. Mais cette version a été enrichie en 1988 d’une musique de Charlie Chaplin lui-même qui a l’avantage d’avoir le caractère répétitif de la musique improvisée des films muets dans les années 1920-30, mais qui utilise ici plusieurs instruments alors qu’originellement la musique était le plus souvent une improvisation au piano. L’histoire est simple. Le clochard, moitié mendiant sans domicile fixe tombe amoureux un jour d’une vendeuse de fleurs aveugle et en même temps il sauve un millionnaire du suicide un soir où ce millionnaire avait trop bu. Cela donne à Charlie Chaplin les moyens de jouer au grand seigneur avec des phases de rejet du millionnaire qui revient à son amitié le soir quand il est bien alcoolisé. Tout cela devient complexe quand il veut aider la vendeuse de fleurs en couvrant son loyer et en lui procurant l’argent dont elle a besoin pour une opération miracle – en Suisse s’il vous plait.
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Mais en cours de route il se trouve mêlé, innocemment bien sûr, à un vol avec effraction dont la victime est le millionnaire qui vient juste de lui donner mille dollars pour s’occuper de la jeune vendeuse de fleurs. Il arrivera à livrer l’argent à la jeune fille mais il sera arrêté juste après pour le vol – le vrai vol par deux cambrioleurs – dont le millionnaire a été la victime. Il va donc passer quelques mois en prison et il en ressort en bien piteux état. Et sa première vraie rencontre est justement la vendeuse de fleurs qui a recouvré la vue et elle le reconnaît comme font les aveugles, au son de la voix et en le touchant légèrement. Et le film s’arrête là. La vendeuse de fleurs dans les rues d’autrefois est aujourd’hui une fleuriste dans une boutique qui a pignon sur rue. Vous pouvez et devez imaginer la suite, s’il y en a une. Le film muet est un peu lent bien sûr, bien que la musique lui donne un peu de nerf. Le film est terriblement romantique et un peu mélodramatique. Mais on ne saura jamais si la bonne action de Charlie Chaplin le sortira de la rue et lui donnera un avenir. Rêvez un peu. Mais 80 ans plus tard le film a bien vieilli, d’abord parce qu’il est muet, même si les acteurs ici sont absolument prodigieux dans le genre. Mais aussi il est naïf. Quand on sait qu’en 1931 on est en plein dans la grande crise de 29 et ses suites et encore dans la prohibition, on est en droit de se demander comment les millions de SDF peuvent bien survivre sans soupes populaires ni armée du salut. On se demande aussi comment les riches peuvent avoir l’alcool qu’ils ont et comment ils peuvent être ivres presque morts tous les soirs. Mais le cinéma reste le rêve et Charlie Chaplin est un doux rêveur qui veut nous faire rêver. Alors rêvons. Je me demande cependant si les enfants et les jeunes générations peuvent apprécier cette naïveté.
CHARLIE CHAPLIN – CITY LIGHTS – 1931-1988 This film is a masterpiece, a masterpiece of silent movies, though in 1988 a music score by Charlie Chaplin was added to the film, with several instruments and not the traditionally improvised piano music of the 1920s and 30s. The music gives some dynamism and density to the film itself. The actors are absolutely fabulous and thus the story without words is quite realistic and poignantly effective. Imagine that tramp Charlie Chaplin is falling in love with a street flower girl who is blind on top of it. He is going to play the gentleman and she is going to fall for his voice and his good manners like kissing her hand. But how can he help her? In the same period, in fact the same day he saves a millionaire from suicide in the most dramatically hilarious way and the millionaire takes him home and becomes 90
his friend when he is drunk in the evening, but he rejects him in the morning when he is sober. Difficult to cultivate a friendship in such conditions; But Charlie Chaplin is patient and benevolent. So with a little bit of goodwill he manages to benefit from this millionaire of his every night. One night though, in the midst of a burglary against the millionaire he is given one thousand dollars for the girl but the delivery to the girl is problematic because he is chased by the whole police of the City of New York and the millionaire who was hit on the head has lost all memory – of course. But Charlie Chaplin delivers the money for the rent and for the surgery, a miracle surgery in Switzerland that is supposed to giver the girl her sight back.
But after delivering the money at 8:00 in the morning he is chased again by cops and this time NYPD wins and he is taken to prison for a burglary and a theft he has not committed. When he gets out of prison in a pretty bad shape one of the very first persons he looks for and he encounters is the flower girl who is no longer selling flowers in the street but is working in a flower shop. At first she does not recognize him but then she does the way blind people do, by recognizing the voice and by touching the man a little. And that’s the end. Will there be a salvation for Charlie Chaplin? We do not know. But Charlie Chaplin is a great romantic who plays naivety to please an audience that is victimized by the great crisis of 1929. How can a homeless person among millions 91
of unemployed and homeless people survive without any popular soup and Salvation Army? But even more difficult right under the fully implemented prohibition amendment how can all, the rich have all the alcohol they have and be drunk every night? But being naïve is probably the only way to survive in this situation and bringing some soothing entertainment to people who have it a lot harder than Charlie Chaplin himself. Enjoy the film that is maybe slightly slow at times due to the fact it is a silent film and they have not remastered the speed, though they added a sound track.
RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH – CHAPLIN It is probably not the best film ever made about Charlie Chaplin, and I even think it is far behind Charlie Chaplin’s own autobiography on which it is supposed to be based. But it makes a couple of points rather well. First, show business is business first of all. Brutal, expeditious, pitiless, cruel, full of hate and with hardly any love, except the illusion of a companionship they call love in Hollywood. But we know that. And even the FBI or McCarthy could not touch that: business money is business money and cannot be spoiled even if the owner is a communist or at least is accused of being one. Second, McCarthyism was an ugly adventure in the USA, but it is shown as having run in the texture of the country from the very start and particularly after the Russian revolution. The best part about it is that it made American politicians suspicious of anything that was not lauding the USA as THE ONLY country of freedom (except of course for those that have been declared unwanted characters, or anything that could in anyway seem to be supporting the poor, the working class, the underlings of this egotistic world. The portrait of Edgar Hoover is that of a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and yet nothing but an apparatchik that never leaves his pacifying desk and the comfortable warmth of his office. Third, this film shows so well through Chaplin’s own life how the world changed and how no politician can stop it. A politician can make some people suffer, at times a lot when he has the means to go out and wage war, but even so he will not be able to change history, to stop history, to even strand or wreck history. Hitler is the best case at hand. The amount of suffering he caused is enormous and yet did he stop history, did he block it into some eternal barbaric dictatorship? Of course not. And Charlie Chaplin’s wisecrack about not having the honor of being a Jew is the best answer anyone could do to any attempt at hijacking history: I don’t have the honor of being your victim, and if I were your victim I would be honored to be one of them, to have their company. British wit and humor at the same time as British caustic sarcasm. Beautiful! 92
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CHARLES CHAPLIN – A KING IN NEW YORK Charles Chaplin is setting up his own troubles with the anti-American activities commission on the screen, and that is quite funny though particularly dramatic. That episode of US history is so strange but also tragic that it should be remembered forever for the mistake not to be ever renewed in the future, though with no guarantee that it will be so. Unluckily in this kind of business there seems to be always a repeat and another repeat and a third repeat, without any ending. Charles Chaplin turns his own mishap into a comedy, with some very traditional but always lively and kind of born again gags and tricks. But he does succeed to turn a dramatic situation into a laughable short episode, though it means a child of ten is turned into a fink who exposes other people to protect his own interest, with no guarantee of any truth in what he may say, since he is a child, and with the certainty that he will be spoiled forever by the episode. This film, no matter how well-felt it may have been, will remain a testimony of that McCarthy period, mocked in his very victims that become Macaby. But we will regret that such a great artist was obliged to come to making this film to bring an end, or at least help to bring an end, to this sorry episode. We would have liked him to have reached his acme in political films with the Dictator and never gone beyond, but unluckily life made him write and shoot another episode which is just as sorry, even if not as bloody, as the previous one.
CHARLIE CHAPLIN – LIMELIGHT – 1952 It is a masterpiece with some funny scenes, especially at the end, but mostly because of the tremendous empathy this film carries, conveys and communicates about life, about death, about doing something with the life we have been entrusted with, something positive, something that may serve the community, other people, something that provides love to those who need it, who deserve it. It is impossible to tell the story of this film without in many ways destroying it. We are in London just before the First World War and we are in show business with Charlie Chaplin as an old comedian, Calvero; a young dancer, Thereza who has some stage fright problems that paralyze her legs, and is impersonated by Claire Bloom; and a young composer, Neville enacted by Sydney Chaplin. In Calvero’s comeback, he will perform with an old partner of his played by Buster Keaton. The interest of the film is its comic dimension intertwined with the dramatic content, with this dancer who has to be supported and even reconstructed in order to be able to use her legs to perfection. Everyone will remember the slap from Calvero in the wings just seconds before she enters the stage when she is 94
having a sudden paralysis fit caused by stage fright. And the slap works because she is so shocked she cannot even think of her legs anymore. Charlie Chaplin after the Second World War seems to be a lot more humane, empathetic with people, individual people, just as if the war had battered him down tremendously and let him sore in his heart and sad in his mind. The big political and social subjects are more or less kept in the past and now he looks at the mental state of human beings in this world that has to be reconstructed after the five years of absolute folly. Maybe McCarthy and his campaign in Hollywood that forced Charlie Chaplin to move back to Great Britain is softening his critical tone.
This final period in Charlie Chaplin’s creative life is, just the same as with Picasso, different but yet the same as for imagination, creativity, intensity, human sympathy and compassion. I must say that the scene of flea taming is really funny, though I may prefer the final act with Buster Keaton, the grand piano, and the violin. The satire of classical concerts is so strong and to the point: formality and appearances that have to be saved, kept and protected so much that then the music or the performance becomes stiff and even forbidding. To be seen urgently if you haven’t already done so. You will all like Calvero’s death on stage, or nearly and you will all think of Molière himself, the greatest comedian of all times and one of the best playwrights, who actually died on stage performing a hypochondriac would-be sick man. 95
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MARGARET ATWOOD’S RED RIDING PROPHET A FEMINIST CRY IN THE DENSEST COLD WAR SITUATION Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU Margaret Atwood committed a major crime against male-dominated society as well as female-descending society. She imagined a society in which women are entirely marginalized and rejected except a small elite minority but since they are sterile they have to find a way to get children they cannot conceive children or carry them to anything looking like birth. So Margaret Atwood imagines a society in which a class of surrogate mother will have to be ritualistically impregnated by the Commanders, the elite men of the elite families, in public and following clear rules. This solution is absolutely obscene. No medical assistance and no checking if the Commanders, the elite men in these elite families are fertile or not. That’s absolute absurdity. This book has been adapted to the silver screen in 1990 and was still valid in that Cold War period in which it appeared, targeting, of course, a possible communistic evolution of the USA towards such a society. But today we are no longer in this simple-minded 97
situation: The Cold War has been out for more than 25 years. But the West cannot survive if they do not have a scapegoat, an enemy and the West is the best manipulator in history and they can always manage to produce an enemy out of nothing, thus negating all natural laws of chemistry.
They were told it was not good to target Islam, so now they target Shia Islam. Is it better? Of course not. And then they target women in Islamic society . . . Unluckily women in Iran are an essential class of workers at all levels, though women cannot be imams or the masters/mistresses of ceremonies in public executions. Shucks! Nothing is that simple. And North Korea or China are not even easier. There might not be many women in the political elite but women are vastly present at all levels of the economy, including at the executive level. Shucks! Again. Nothing is simple. Then they try Russia. Same remark and the rich males we know in the west are executives who want to move out of Russia, with all their assets and money, hence who want to emigrate and steal, loot, pillage Russian capital at the same time. Shucks! A third time! Nothing is simple. 98
So American television insists as much as possible on the existence of a Russian mafia, of an Armenian mafia who bring drugs to the US and cheap women for prostitution. In an older period, it was the Georgian mafia and Schwarzenegger was the main Soviet bully that brought them down in the USA. Things have changed then and yet are always the same: these rotten Russians not only are good at hacking and computing, but they can even hack American missiles and compute their trajectory into the sea. Shucks! One more time! The missiles were not Russian but American. So who pretends to be the cop of the world?
There was the same tendency in Great Britain in the late 1980s under Thatcher and the Conservatives: the country was invaded by Russian, Armenian and why not Polish mafia. That will produce Brexit eventually. But I just wonder how they would have been able to build the equipment for the Olympic Games if they had not had Polish workers to cast the concrete and move the stones. 99
We can maybe consider Atwood was good in 1985, still not bad in 1990. But in 2017 what can it produce when the authoritarian trend is in the USA itself and in the White House first of all. The authoritarians were elected, not with a popular vote though, but that proves nothing since Mussolini was elected, Salazar was elected, Hitler was elected. The only one who was not elected was Franco. This book shows very clearly that democracy is not a protection against such trends because it is in New England that the evolution takes place. A little bit of white supremacist magic potion and magic powder and the best and most democratic American society can easily fall down into the chasm of H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell and definitely many more including here Margaret Atwood.
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I read the book after I watched a couple of times the old film with Faye Dunaway of 1990. And I do think it was a wise choice. The book is a lot more powerful because of the treatment of time. The book is often considered as a dystopia and that could be right if we considered the shift from modern time USA to that world a possibility. It is based on the idea that one day, because of all the manipulation of sexuality essentially by women’s liberation movements the country does not produce children anymore, women have become sterile and this very assumption is absurd because fertility is a dual carriageway. This sounds a lot like a society deciding to victimize women because some genetic accident prevents the production of children, and in the book, only the elite is considered.
The book is a constant movement from the past before the transformation (and the main character was married to a certain Luke and had a daughter, which does not sound like sterility); the time after this period when the society slowly and radically changed from what it used to be to a strict totalitarian state that aimed and 101
still aims at getting women out of the public space, out of all professions, out of banks and financial dealings: everything has to be covered up by the authority of a man. At the same time, women are seen as the only way to survive as a species, to survive as a state, to survive as a society and as such their power is enormous.
Women are divided into several groups identified by the color they wear. At the top, you have the Wives and their Daughters (who are daughters produced by the Handmaids from the sperm of the Commanders) who dress in blue. Then the Aunts who are responsible for the training of the next group, the Handmaids. The Aunts are dressed in some kind of brown. Then the Handmaids who are the women who give birth to children for the only sake of the elite couples, here reduced to a Wife and a Commander, though we do not know what he commands. These Handmaids are dressed in red and their only task is to get pregnant and deliver a healthy child, normally from the Commander, but with wide possibilities to compensate for the probable sterility of these Commanders. Commanders and most other security people who are only men are dressed in black. Then you have the Marthas who are the servants of this elite, dressed in grey. Then you have the Econowives who are poor women who are married and may have children: they do 102
not work and they are the wives of all the men who work. They are dressed in rather nondescript colors and worn out dresses. Note there is also a clandestine group of women who are kept underground for the sole entertainment of the elite Commanders and foreign businessmen. Their fate is short lived most of the time since their function is to be “beautiful” and satisfy the fancies of the males that come to their special hotel. The mass of all other women are sent to the colonies where they are worked and contaminated to death within two or three years. Altogether then seven classes of women.
The corresponding hierarchy of men is not given. We only meet doctors, some shopkeepers, one driver (of a commander of course) and then security men called Guardians of the Faith and there is an allusion to spies named Eyes. Though political power is entirely in the hands of men, we hardly see it and the only power we know is that of the Wives and their Daughters. Note we here have the same pattern as in a Jewish society where women are transmitting Jewishness to the children (here reduced to daughters). They do quote the Old Testament and only the Old Testament, though they have modified a few verses. They are absolutely not of Christian inspiration as for this position of women. 103
To go back to the constant shifting of time, after the first two older layers we have the layer when the main character is captured when trying to escape from this country to go picnic on the other side of the border with her husband and their daughter. The daughter is of course immediately given to a Mother and becomes a Daughter. The mother, the main character, since she is fertile is turned into a handmaid. So we have the time of this long transition in some kind of center under the sole authority of Aunts. Then the main character will be appointed – for the first time – to a Commander and his Wife and that’s where the timeline becomes blurred. The main character loses the perfect consciousness of the timeline that is hers. At the end she speaks as if she had been in that position for more than four months, which is the normal time allotted to a Handmaid to become pregnant, otherwise, she is moved to another Wife and Commander, or to the colonies. In other words, the vast majority of women are expendable and this fact is in total contradiction with the idea that women transmit life and guarantee the survival of the species.
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The most interesting aspect of this book is the fact that it is all told by the main character and from her point of view. The flashbacks of varying depth and all description of events and people are captured through her eyes and at times she wonders if she is telling the truth. Her liaison with Nick, the driver, arranged by the Wife she is supposed to obey, is thus at times described from different points of view, though always by the main character who says the first version is not correct, then the second version is not correct either, and we can doubt the third version is correct. This succession of three versions shows that this main character has lost all sense of identity and she is rediscovering some personal dimension within this liaison that will make her pregnant. If she can tell this episode in three different modes, it’s because it has little to do with the standard daily exploitation she is the victim of. Here she is entering a field of emotions that cannot be reduced to a cold inhumanity and has to be endowed with some richness.
The end has only a vague connection with the end in the 1990 film and I won’t tell you what it is. We just have to wonder what the main dimension of this story is. We could make it a dystopian metaphor of the real world. This metaphor could be seen as feasible in 1985 at the ‘end of the USSR, but it was no longer valid in 1990 since the 105
Berlin Wall had fallen and the USSR was going to dissolve. Nowadays it is just plainly difficult to consider it as a metaphor for what is happening in some countries that are heavily under military control and operations, including from foreign powers, or of countries that the USA wants to classify as dictatorship, like Iran and North Korea, though as for women Saudi Arabia is a lot more backward than any other country in the world. Then we can wonder if it is a parable. But the tale does not lead to any positive ending for the society at large. It is a lot more the description of segregation, racism, slavery, concentration camps, exclusion and exploitation, supremacy in, one word, white of course: there is NOT ONE BLACK person in the whole book. The only minority that is actually present is the Quakers who are seen as dangerous because they help people to evade from this prison. There is a mention of Jews but they have been forced to emigrate with a choice between emigration or genocide. It is definitely a supremacist society but after all, non-whites have been eliminated. Then it is the supremacy of an elite shared between women on one hand and men on the other. All along all those – here women – who want to step out of this society only have one option: suicide by killing themselves or suicide by having themselves executed in a way or another. That’s a really dehumanizing, devitalizing and decerebralizing society with no escape, no future, no salvation. And as such, it is an extraordinarily fascinating book in the present trump times of ours.
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MARGARET ATWOOD – HAROLD PINTER – FAYE DUNAWAY – THE HANDMAID’S TALE – 1990 I will only consider here the 1990 film with Faye Dunaway, not the novel beyond, nor of course the recent adaptation as a TV series that is not available on the DVD market. We are in the United States of America after it became the Republic of Gilead. I will not enter the Biblical meaning of this word that can be used to designate some regions of the old Biblical Israel and three characters in the Old Testament, among them the father of Jephthah, that crazy general who swore to have the first person coming to him after the battle if it is a victory sacrificed to God. He thus has to put his daughter to death. But that gives you the flavor of the story. In this Republic of Gilead, men are absolutely dominant and they have reinstalled or reinstated the standard total submission of women to go against the total dissolution of society before due to sexual promiscuity, abortion, family planning, contraception, artificial insemination, gender orientation, etc. Women have to go back to their main and only function in that male-dominated society: to give birth to babies conceived in the normal natural good old intercourse between a man and a woman. And that’s where the story becomes bizarre or even squalid. 107
Women are, like for men in Brave New World, divided into clearly defined groups that have to dress in a particular color. Grey is for the plain servants. Then, red is for the handmaids, those whose sole function is to procreate babies with the master of the household they are attached to. White is for some kind of religious characters who participate in various rites. Maroon is for the women who are controlling the handmaids, assigning them wherever they are needed, and of course, punishing them when “necessary.” Blue is for the ladies of the various households whose babies are produced by the handmaids attached to them and their husbands. All men are in black. There is a last category of women: those who cannot be integrated into any category, particularly as handmaids and are the “girls” of some parties for the masculine elite. In other words, they are the escorts or working girls of the elite men of the society. The disease that is the cause of this situation is purely surreal, causing the sterility of most women and those who are not sterile are used as reproductive human chattel. The film though seems to hint that the man, Fred, Kate, the handmaid the story is centered on, should provide with a child, is sterile, and his sterile wife, Serena, suggests Kate should use the services of her husband’s chauffeur, Nick. All that is of course sordid. 108
During that time Fred, the Commander, is systematically hunting down the resistance with the clear objective of exterminating them. Today we call that genocide. Apart from Blacks and gays, the concept of resisting people is rather vague and we can wonder how this elite can live if there is no proletariat, even lumpen-proletariat to work for them.
Fred falls in love with Kate, but that brings no pregnancy. Nick, on the other hand, falls in love with her too and she with him and that brings a pregnancy as if without equally shared love there is no pregnancy possible. When Serena learned that Fred had taken Kate to one of the elite’s parties and that she had worn her own black clothing instead of her red dress, she becomes furious and wants a vengeance. On the other hand, Nick and Kate want to escape Gilead with their future baby. That’s the dramatic knot in the thread of that story, a Gordian knot actually and it will have to be cut, but how and for what future?
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The fact that this old novel and this here old film have been remembered for a TV series has, of course, to do with the election of the present President of the USA. The rise of bigotry and populism in the USA today is seen as dangerous. Just the same way The Man in the High Castle, an old novel stating the same type of dystopia centered on men essentially has been brought back to life by Amazon Prime, this Handmaid’s Tale, centered as it is on women, had to be brought back to life too. The present period in our globalized world is bringing up the question of refusing change and even dreaming of a full U-turn and going back to what the world was in the past, the Old Testament, in this case, A victory of Japan and Germany in 1945 in The Man in the High Castle. The pessimists are going to say that will lead to the Third World War. The optimist will say that 110
God or man’s rational wisdom will prevail and the Singularity of Intelligent Machines will bring humanity eternal life and absolute peace with no work what so ever to do. The dream of a permanent siesta or farniente. Though it may very well be a Matrix that leads to eternal slavery and war.
POUL RUDERS – TJENERINDENS FORTAELLING – THE HANDMAID’S TALE – MICHAEL SCHONWANDT – ROYAL DANISH THEATER – 2000 This recording of this opera is rather frustrating since the visual part of it which are important and autonomous as for the whole musical production are not provided of course. There is no full recording of the opera available on the market, or YouTube. We are thus reduced to this audio version which is luckily attached to an important booklet that provides descriptions of all the visual episodes, most of them without music at all. I must say though that the newly produced TV series adapted from the novel has motivated Norman Frizzle to release a short section a later production of the opera, in an English version, on YouTube, published on Sep 30, 2017, (2006) The start of a complete performance preservation from the English National Opera's first production in English of the powerful opera version by Poul Ruders (music) and Paul Bentley (libretto) of the Margaret Atwood novel. The camcorder was a first-generation digital Canon, the primitive video processed and bumped up to HD (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlixRXz17ME). 111
Another musical adaptation of the novel was produced in January 2013 by Chris Garrard who put on YouTube on March 28, 2013, three highlights of the three parts of his chamber opera. It is interesting to see that more modern version of the story, even if we cannot have the whole opera. The three highlights are available as follows. The Handmaid's Tale - Highlights (Part 1) Part 1 of the edited highlight of The Handmaid's Tale. Based on the novel by Margaret Atwood. Composed by Chris Garrard. Dramaturgy by Lore Lixenberg with the cast and crew. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACY8BKATx0I&t=91s. The Handmaid's Tale - Highlights (Part 2) 112
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtwDRwRHhzk. The Handmaid's Tale - Highlights (Part 3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvnrJESvsjM&t=8s. The composer gave an interview on January 15 to The Oxford Culture Review, https://theoxfordculturereview.com/2013/01/15/the-handmaids-tale-aninterview-with-chris-garrard/.
To add another adaptation in October 2013 I will choose the Royal Winnipeg Ballet production of The Handmaid's Tale, Choreographer Lila York, Composer James Macmillan, main dancer Amanda Green (as Offred). You can see a short presentation of a rehearsal at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVQOzKGFE0c. There are also a few excerpts published at the time in the press of by the RWB. But it remains a fact that the first musical adaptation is Poul Ruders and it is worth a lot in the way it deals and processes the problem of women's sexual exploitation, if not enslavement. It all starts with a Biblical quotation 113
from Genesis, the story of Jacob. The opera only quotes Genesis 30:1-5 but the reference is, of course, clear to every listener and they have a wide excerpt in mind. Let me quote Genesis 30:1-13: "30 When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister; and she said to Jacob, ‘Give me children, or I shall die!' 2 Jacob became very angry with Rachel and said, ‘Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?' 3 Then she said, ‘Here is my maid Bilhah; go into her, that she may bear upon my knees and that I too may have children through her.' 4 So she gave him her maid Bilhah as a wife; and Jacob went into her. 5 And Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son. 6 Then Rachel said, ‘God has judged me, and has also heard my voice and given me a son'; therefore, she named him Dan. 7 Rachel's maid Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. 8 Then Rachel said, ‘With mighty wrestlings, I have wrestled with my sister, and have prevailed'; so she named him Naphtali. 9 When Leah saw that she had ceased bearing children, she took her maid Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. 10 Then Leah's maid Zilpah bore Jacob a son. 11 And Leah said, ‘Good fortune!' so she named him Gad. 12 Leah's maid Zilpah bore Jacob a second son. 13 And Leah said, ‘Happy am I! For the women will call me happy'; so she named him Asher." I quote this longer passage because of the repetition of the situation: using a handmaid, in those days a servant was closer to a slave than to a salaried worker, and these handmaids, servants or slaves were not Jewish. They were "Arabs" or "Egyptians" as they are called in the Old Testament. Jacob uses his wife's maid twice and gets two sons. Then he uses his wife's sister's maid to produce two more sons. This double duality is extremely heavy in the Old Testament. We must also keep in mind that Abraham will do the same thing with his wife's maid to get his first son, Ishmael and that then his wife will give birth to Isaac. This wife will request the expulsion of Ishmael and his mother to the desert, clearly to die there, but they were saved by God and Ishmael became the ancestor of all Muslims later on. This reference to the Old Testament is of course discussed and criticized by many, though it is difficult to really ignore that the Old Testament considered this situation as rather banal and Solomon 114
will also have some kind of a love affair with a certain Queen of Sheba who was not a Jew and this love affair is referred to with reverence in Jewish, Islamic and Ethiopian traditions. Strangely enough, the Christians are more or less minimizing these stories.
The end of the story is more ambiguous than in the novel and in the 1990 film. Offred is arrested but the Commander has not been assassinated by her and Nick does not play a big role. She is more or less arrested for her "fornication" though it was imposed on her by the Commander. So we don't know where she is going and what is going to happen. She says herself: "Whether this is my end or a new beginning >I have no way of knowing. I have given myself over in the hands of strangers. And so I step into the darkness or else the light." Strangely enough, she seems to be the only one who believes there is maybe some light. The society that had been described here is absolute as the fate of failed Handmaids. Either the colonies to die under toxic and excessive work, or the Jezebel's, the entertaining shady house where the male elite and male foreign visitors can relax in forbidden goods, comfort and pleasures. There is no light in that. Apart from that, the opera follows rather well the story, though closer to the novel than to the older film. This enables the composer of keeping many flashbacks to the "time before" when Offred was a woman married to Luke and having a daughter. These flashbacks also portray the transformation of the old society into an absolute puritan and fundamentalist regime governed by males, excluding blacks, 115
homosexuals, welfare people, and women. This transformation is visually ^provided by the opera (we only have descriptions of this visual presentation) but the words are particularly clear and Offred is Offred in the time of the story and a (body)-double plays her role in the flashbacks. This splitting of Offred into two characters is also very pregnant about the total uprooting of handmaids who are supposed to forget their past.
At this level, we have to consider the production and the music. The production runs into a problem without the visual show in front of our eyes. Female characters are by far dominant in numbers and they are apparently all of them very close in range with five mezzo-sopranos and four sopranos. That makes it difficult for us to follow most of the scenes. Since this version is the original in Danish it is also slightly difficult to follow what is being said, if you are not used to Danish. But apart from this difficulty (due to the fact it is a live recording and not a studio recording that could have slightly differentiated the various voices), we must say the 116
music is often surprising and even disturbing. It uses in many transition moments noise as well as music. These noises could correspond to something projected onto the screen used on the stage, but it also creates a universe of metallic strong powerful at times discordant noises that wrap us up into a very frustrating sound universe. On the other hand, the music is quite modern in its lack of harmony and often softness. It is hard just like the suffering of these women. It is distant and cold just like the fate of these women. It can even be erratic and disturbing just like the split of these women between their remembered past and their submission to a life that has no past and no future. The system would like them to become nonchalant in this doom, but it is impossible and the music reminds us of this impossibility in its very shrill and often broken discordance.
This remark of mine has to be applied to the flashbacks in which the music or the noise is not becoming in any way softer or sweeter. The flashbacks are not sweet memories and soft recollections. They are dramatic nightmarish haunting visions that cannot in any way either be tamed into virtual souvenirs of a happy time, or eradicated and uprooted and expelled 117
from the handmaids' memory. It is in no way the memory you could cherish. It is a read-only repetitively-random haunting memory that can never be stopped, curbed or pushed aside. The music is perfect for that purpose. And when we watch the small section uploaded online by Norman Frizzle we really think the whole video should be edited and provided to the public. The sound recording of the opera makes us think it should be a priority. Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
THE HANDMAID’S TALE – SEASON 1 – 2017 The first season of this series starts with the failed escape and ends with the arrest under the “plotting maneuvering” of Nick, the driver, the lover of the Handmaid and the father of her unborn child. That’s the beginning and practically the end of the original novel. But so many things have been changed. First of all, special insistence is used to show this Gilead Republic as particularly brutal against any opponents who refuse their reading of the Christian Scriptures, but also against the handmaids themselves who are constantly suffering punishments and sanctions and hostility from everyone or nearly. The book was clear and at the same time more discreet about physical violence. Nowhere there was the allusion to one handmaid being stoned to death by the assembled handmaids under the authority of the aunts, this Kapos of this concentration republic. What’s 118
new is also the fact that anyone among the elite can be submitted to some harsh treatment like the amputation of a forearm for some lustful “mistake.” Pleasure is of course banned. Sex is only performed as a public ceremony, note the servants are not present in this series, to impregnate the handmaid with a child that will be the child of the commander and his wife, after weaning.
That’s another change. The outing to the clandestine brothel for the elite and foreign visitors was a unique occasion in the book. It is performed twice in this adaptation because the Handmaid’s friend from her previous life is not only met here but she escapes and has a pack of letters from handmaids collected over time delivered to our Handmaid, Offred (note the ambiguity between “of-Fred” and “offered”) and that is essential to explain and set up some resistance among them, resistance that leads our Handmaid to refuse to cast the first stone on the handmaid that is supposed to be stoned to death, and all the handmaids present do exactly the same. Here is a twist in the story. The commander’s wife became jealous in the book when she discovered her husband had borrowed her own discarded clothing from her previous time to “disguise the Handmaid for the outing to 119
the brothel. Little of that here since the wife who could have gotten violent is pacified by the discovery the Handmaid is pregnant. No real contact with some organized resistance like in the book and no attempt of a request for the handmaid to assassinate her commander who is the head of the military operations against this organized resistance. Yet, Nick, the driver, is ambiguous since he organizes the arrest of the Handmaid and let her know she has to submit because that’s the only way out for her. We come to the end of the season with the Handmaid in the Black Maria.
So far it looks more like an enriched storyline rather than a completely changed storyline. The real change is in the fact that the handmaid’s husband is alive and managed to escape when he was left alone behind to confront the police. In the book, it is clearly indicated he was killed. In the series, it is clearly indicated he is alive and living in some Little America colony in Canada with all sorts of survivors from the Gilead Republic. That’s a change because it is the framework of a lot of science fiction films on such an apocalyptic end of the world: some survivors rebuild the USA in order to 120
reconquer their lost fatherland. We can think of Matrix, Stephen King’s The Stand, and first of all the never-ending saga of Schwarzenegger’s Terminator. That’s a great change from the novel.
The novel was a direct reflection of the Cold War. This series is a direct reflection or anticipation of what is happening under Trump, the transformation of the USA into an international bully, an irrational whimsical dealmaker who is getting no deals at all. Think just five minutes. Tariffs against China. China responds with blocking their purchasing soya beans, corn, and pork, just at the time when the crops are harvested and when the pigs are entering the fattening period. A catastrophe for the people who have borrowed money from their banks to pay for the harvests of soya beans and corn and the raising of pigs. And these people voted for Trump. One-third of the production of soya beans had been reserved by China. The order is canceled or blocked with tariffs. On the other hand, China has tripled their soya bean order to Russia and will pay hard currency for that crop, providing Russia with a good outlet for their own agriculture that will prosper on that – and there will be no return to the 121
USA – and providing Russia with good hard currency cash flow. Bye, Bye, Sanctions! That’s only one example and this series is reflecting this new reality: what will the USA become when they start feeling the harshness of the situation they have created themselves? And the latest news is about unemployment. In spite of a high level of job creations (213,000) unemployment went up from 3.8% to 4%. That’s the proof people who had abandoned the idea of ever getting a job are coming back onto the labor market that is not able to provide the necessary jobs. And wait one more month and you’ll see inflation. Like in this series they will have to introduce rationing tickets. Maybe not but yet…!
We are waiting for the second season since then it will be beyond the book. The descent into total destruction or the renascence of freedom? In Stephen King’s terms: Las Vegas or Boulder? Randall Flagg, the white evil man in black, or Abagail Freemantle, the old black lady playing the guitar and calling upon God’s grace? A nuclear warhead and the sacrifice of four, Glen Bateman, Stu Redman, Ralph Brentner, and Larry Underwood, reduced to three when Stu Redman breaks his leg en-route to Las Vegas. Three crucified men will die in Las Vegas when the nuclear warhead gets off.
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I just hope the next season or seasons is or are not some liquefying and dissolving of a good story into follow-up peripeteias that break the tenseness and the density of the original tale. It takes a Frank Herbert to produce several volumes after the original Dune, and yet the density of the message was lost and David Lynch had the wisdom not to go beyond the original novel with his film adaptation. Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
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SCREEN OBSESSION AND MENTAL ENTANGLEMENT CINEMA AND TELEVISION RECLUSION MISCELLANEOUS REVIEWS FROM FEBRUARY 2, 2016 TO OCTOBER 27, 2018 https://www.academia.edu/37660324/Screen_obsession_REVIE WS
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU Table of Contents 1- Léa Fazer – Maestro – 2014 PAGE 6 2- Xavier Dolan – It’s Only The End Of The World – Juste La Fin Du Monde – 2016 PAGE 7 3- Ken Burns – Pbs – The Civil War – 1990 PAGE 10 4- Brassens La Mauvaise Réputation – 2011 PAGE 22 5- The Red Riding Trilogy – 1974, 1980, 1983 – 2009 PAGE 23 6- Ben Ketai – Startup – Season 1 & 2 – 2016 PAGE 24 7- Erick Zonca – Fleuve Noir – 2018 PAGE 26 8- L’école Est Finie – 2018 PAGE 26 9- Sneaky Pete’s Sneaker Prints PAGE 27 10- Amazon Prime – Sneaky Pete Season 1 – 2017 PAGE 28 11- Amazon Prime – Sneaky Pete Season 2 – 2018 PAGE 29 12- Jafar Panahi – Three Faces – Trois Visages – Se Rokh – 2018 PAGE 30 13- Amazon Prime – You Are Wanted – Seasons 1 & 2 – 2017-2018 PAGE 32 14- Sleep Dealer – 2008 PAGE 34 15- Tom Hardy – Taboo First Season – 2017 PAGE 34 16- The Rider – 2017 PAGE 35 17- Charles Dance – Childhood’s End – 2015 PAGE 36 18- HBO – The Night Of – 2016 PAGE 38 19- Amazon Prime – The Looming Tower – Season 1 – 2018 PAGE 39 20- Law And Order – Special Victims Unit – Season – 8-9-10 – 2007-2009 PAGE 41 21- Charlie Brooker – Black Mirror – White Christmas – 2014 PAGE 41 22- Claude Autant-Lara – Le Comte De Monte Cristo – 1961 PAGE 42 23- Andy Mushietti – Stephen King – It – 2017 PAGE 44 24- Ryan Gosling – Harrison Ford – Blade Runner 2049 – 2017 PAGE 46 25- Amazon Prime – Goliath – Season One – 2016 PAGE 49 26- Amazon Prime – Goliath – Season Two – 2018 PAGE 51 27- Robin Campillo – 120 Battements De Cœur – 2017 PAGE 52 28- Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri – 2017 PAGE 54 124
29- David Krumholtz, Rob Morrow, Judd Hirsch – Numb3rs – 2005-2010 PAGE 55 30- Alex Timbers, Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman – Mozart In The Jungle – 2014 PAGE 57 31- Mohammad Rasoulof – A Man Of Integrity – 2017 PAGE 59 32- Mohammad Rasoulof – Un Homme Intègre – 2017 PAGE 60 33- Amazon Prime – Mcmafia – Season 1 – 2018 PAGE 61 34- Channel 4 – Netflix – Black Mirror – 2011 PAGE 63 35- Science-Fiction Über Alles, Above All And Everything PAGE 64 36- Life – 2017 PAGE 64 37- Passengers – 2016 PAGE 65 38- Arrival – 2016 PAGE 66 39- Christopher Nolan – Dunkirk – 2017 PAGE 67 40- Moonlight – 2017 PAGE 69 41- Tom Hanks – Forrest Gump – 1994 PAGE 70 42- Leonardo Dicaprio – Tom Hanks – Steven Spielberg – Catch Me If You Can – 2002 PAGE 71 43- Tom Hanks – Apollo 13 – 1995 PAGE 73 44- Tom Hanks – Cast Away – 2000 PAGE 74 45- Stephen King – The Dark Tower – 2017 PAGE 75 46- The Battle Of Iwo Jima - From Both Sides - Horror And Inhumanity Equally Shared - Heroism Of The Dead - Exploitation Of The Survivors PAGE 75 47- Clint Eastwood – Steven Spielberg – Flags Of Our Fathers – 2006 PAGE 75 48- Clint Eastwood – Steven Spielberg – Letters From Iwo Jima – 2006 PAGE 78 49- Person Of Interest – Season 1-4 – 2011 PAGE 80 50- Person Of Interest – Season 5 – 2017 PAGE 82 51- BBC – Trevor Eve – Shoestring – 2017 (1979-1980) PAGE 83 52- BBC – Bergerac – 1981-1990 PAGE 84 53- Stephen King – Frank Darabont – The Mist – 2007 PAGE 86 54- Michael Douglas – Sean Penn – The Game – 1997 PAGE 88 55- Amazon Prime – The Last Tycoon – Series 1 – 2017 PAGE 91 56- Geoff Nelder – Aria: Left Luggage – 2011 PAGE 92 57- Kenneth Lonergan – Manchester By The Sea – 2016 PAGE 94 58- Quentin Tarantino – Oliver Stone – Natural Born Killers – 1994 PAGE 96 59- Countdown To Zero – 2010 PAGE 99 60- George Romero – Stephen King – Creepshow – 1982 PAGE 101 61- Stephen King – George Romero – Creepshow 2 – 1987 PAGE 103 62- Bradley Parker – Oren Peli – Carey Van Dyke – Chernobyl Diaries – 2012 PAGE 104 63- Stanley Kubrick – Peter Sellers – George C. Scott – Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb – 1964 PAGE 106 125
64- Michel Piccoli & Romy Schneider – La Passante Du Sans Souci – 1982 – Basé Sur Le Roman De Joseph Kessel – 1936 PAGE 107 65- Animated Soviet Propaganda – 1997 PAGE 109 66- Alex Gibney – Zero Days World War 3.0 – 2016 PAGE 110 67- Benedict Cumberbatch – Sherlock – The Abominable Bride – BBC – 2015 PAGE 112 68- The Killing – The Complete Series – 2011-2014 PAGE 113 69- Benedict Cumberbatch – Sherlock – Series Four – BBC – 2017 PAGE 115 70- Martin Scorsese – Leonardo Dicaprio – The Wolf Of Wall Street – 2013 PAGE 116 71- George Clooney – Money Monster – 2016 PAGE 118 72- Lana Wachowski & Lilly Wachowski – The Matrix – 1999 – Matrix Reloaded – 2003 - Matrix Revolutions – 2003 PAGE 119 73- Fritz Lang – Die Nibelungen – Siegfried – Kriemhilds Rache– 1924 PAGE 125 74- Dr. Dre – Easzy-E – Ice Cube – Mc Ren – Dj Yella – Straight Outta Compton – 2015 PAGE 127 75- Jack Clayton – The Innocents – 1961 PAGE 129 76- Fringe – 2008 PAGE 131 77- The Complete Thin Blue Line – Rowan Atkinson – 1995/2001 PAGE 133 78- Stephen King – Under The Dome – Tv Series – Season 1 – 2013 PAGE 134 79- Stephen King – Under The Dome – Tv Series – Season 2 – 2014 PAGE 136 80- Stephen Nking – Under The Dome – Tv Series – Season 3 – 2015 PAGE 138 81- J.R.R. Tolkien – The Hobbit – Trilogy – An Unexpected Journey, 2012 – The Desolation Of Smaug, 2013 – The Battle Of The Five Armies, 2014 PAGE 140 82- Deadpool – 2016 PAGE 144 83- Leonardo Dicaprio – The Revenant – 2016 PAGE 145 84- Mulder And Scully – The X Files – Series 1993-2002 – X Files The Film 1998 – X Files I Want To Believe 2008 PAGE 146 85- Ma Loute – Slack Bay – 2016 PAGE 149 86- Quentin Tarantino – The Hateful Eight – 2015 PAGE 152 87- Tony Parsons – Man And Boy – 1999 PAGE 153 88- Alan Rickman – Sigourney Weaver – Carrie Anne Moss – Snowcake – 2006 PAGE 158 89- Coen Brothers – Clooney – Hail Caesar – 2016 PAGE 159 90- Steven Spielberg – Bridge Of Spies – 2015 PAGE 160 91- Les Innocentes – The Innocents – Agnus Dei – 2016 PAGE 162 92- Matt Damon – Ridley Scott – The Martian – 2015 PAGE 164 93- Spotlight – 2015 PAGE 165 126
Illustrations cover page and last page Annunzio Coulardeau
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