Loaded Quotes: Bloody Ambition

She danced, and was obliged to go on dancing through the dark night. The shoes bore her away over thorns and stumps till she was all torn and bleeding; she danced away over the heath to a lonely little house. Here, she knew, lived the executioner; and she tapped with her finger at the window and said:

‘Come out, come out! I cannot come in, for I must dance.’

And the executioner said: ‘I don’t suppose you know who I am. I strike off the heads of the wicked, and I notice that my axe is tingling to do so. “Don’t cut off my head!’ said Karen, ‘for then I could not repent of my sin. But cut off my feet with the red shoes.’

Excerpt from ” The Red Shoes” by Hans Christian Anderson

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An enchanting woman whose feet have been hacked to bloody stumps is an image of humanity that comforts me.

Let me explain.

We are all complex mixtures of beauty and horror, pain and delight, greed and charity. But there is such a cry for dichotomies in western culture, that we tend to ignore this. It’s simple!! Pretty is pretty, and Yucky is yucky, now let’s all get ice cream sandwiches!!

But there is no pretending when it comes to Karen. The crude image of her perfect body sitting atop bloody mutilated legs makes her brokenness impossible to hide. And isn’t that sort of honesty liberating? Sometimes, I feel like my body is a lie I tell to anyone who is capable of seeing me. It is young, functional, it has no apparent deformities, and it conceals my self-loathing. It’s nice sometimes because I never truly feel vulnerable, but it breeds a lot insecurity. If no one sees me for what I am, how can I ever truly feel accepted?

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I think that a lot of people will say that this story is about how vanity can ruin you and blablabl.. more oppressive ideas about female sexuality professed by the catholic church… but I have always seen it as a tale about facing the good, the bad, and the bloody within yourself.

The truth isn’t simple; It is a young girl who looks gorgeous from the waste up, but is forced to hobble around on the ghosts of her own feet.

–

Angie

Girls on Film: Re-evaluating Nostalgia in The Great Gatsby

Last night I attended Doug Benson’s Interruption of The Great Gatsby at The Cinefamily. I hadn’t seen the film, but had heard that it was a big, awful mess designed to win over young viewers with brain-numbing hip-hop music and party culture extravagance. I couldn’t wait for the mocking to begin. But something unexpected happened between Benson’s “Does this movie take place on Earth?” and Thomas Lennon’s “Can anybody tell me who that character is? For a million dollars? Anyone?”….

I became interested.

Like a lot of people who heard about Luhrmann’s Gatsby before seeing it in a theater, I went in expecting to be offended by the off-base portrayal of the Jazz Age. Because I admittedly adopt the type of unfounded nostalgia that no person my age should. As the camera swooped into a lavish hotel room and the thumping bass of club music played over the speakers, my instinct was to say “Hey! THAT’S NOT HOW IT WAS! ” But I realized then, that I had no right to think that because all my ideas of The Jazz Age are based on images from Boardwalk Empire and Betty Boop.

It’s true that the emotional nuances of the original story are stomped on by Luhrmann’s signature vulgarity. And it’s true that he made Gatsby’s house look like a rap music video, but when we strip it down isn’t Gatsby an excessively rich dude who throws parties littered with drunk girls, booming music, celebrities, and free booze?… The interpretation isn’t exactly off the mark.

Luhrmann’s movies are often panned, but I really think that he has a talent for showing that young, stupid people are young and stupid no matter what backdrop you throw them against. We want to believe that we’ve missed out on something. That superficiality is just the oozy afterbirth of the 1980s and that our beloved Jazz Age was better than whatever we’re living in now. But the shallowness that we criticize without restraint in our own time, existed without question, in the times that we idealize.

It was not a tale of disillusionment ..or the hopelessness of time, but I left the film wanting to understand my attachment to worlds that can no longer be accessed and my need to believe that the magic so absent in the world today existed decades ago.

–

Angie Hoover

Loaded Quotes: Post Modernist Indecisiveness in The Bell Jar

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Europe and Africa […]

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

– Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

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At 24, I related to Sylvia so much that it frightened me. ( If you’re not familiar, her story doesn’t end well). I felt her words in my bones. The fear of death without growth, the heaviness of responsibility, the inclinations to find life both meaningless and meaningful… I saw myself becoming her: A lonely, deflated, narcissist sipping on an agonizing cocktail of self-loathing and superiority. I think maybe that is what drove me to start making decisions in my own life.

What I understand now is that the right decisions are only right because you’ve made them. Whether you decide to be a missionary in Africa, or a pinterest-obsessed house-wife, you will be OK. The problems arise when your mortality weighs on you so heavily, that you neglect to make any decision at all. Maybe if I don’t choose, life will stop moving and I can just stop dying. But it won’t, because no one get’s out of this world alive, and if you don’t make your own decisions, Time will make them for you.

Don’t get me wrong. I can’t order at a McDonald’s without calling 12 friends for advice first, but I am much more capable of dealing with the big stuff in my life now that I realize I will die, and I have to make my peace with not having enough time to do ALL THE THINGS! Decisions-real decisions– require sacrifice and commitment. So, there is no moving forward without accepting the death of those lives that will never belong to you.

Here’s to breaking out of Limbo

– Angie

Conversations with The Nerd Guru: Dealing with Anxiety and Anger

ANGIE: Can you pinpoint where your social anxiety comes from.. if there is such a place?

MITCH: my social anxiety comes from me feeling like a freak.

ANGIE: That sounds simple enough. but it isn’t. at all.

MITCH: I see other people. normal people. couples in the mall, people walking along smiling. I see the disconnect between them and myself. I realize how impossibly hard it is for me to simply feel happy and I spiral.

ANGIE: hmm.. I just assume that everyone is secretly anxious and depressed and in denial about it. Is that worse?

MITCH: everyone has issues… doesn’t mean that people need to walk around looking blissful… fucking assholes

ANGIE: how do you feel about taking medication ?

MITCH: i have no issues with my medication when I am on it. When I am on the pills I can function… I’m not always happy but happiness is an option.

ANGIE: Do you go to therapy too?

MITCH: Therapy… is like a D&D group. It works great if you get a connection with the people involved… if there is no chemistry then it’s awkward and forced.

ANGIE: I have only ever had old jewish therapists who ask me about my mother incessantly. then I stop going to them.

ANGIE: I try so hard to understand everyone that I can’t even feel when I’m angry anymore.

MITCH: anger is addictive! chemically in your brain. even though it’s a negative emotion it feels good to act on it although you generally feel bad afterwards because you are coming down from a high… so hurting people due to anger…. there is a reason and people… hate groups, bigots… they are junkies. i know it seems weird but… it relieves me… these people have become addicted to hate and they keep returning to it because it makes them feel good and not because they necessarily believe it… it makes the world a little less bleak and a bit more rational in my eyes

ANGIE: That makes me feel more like a person.

MITCH: it is something that helps me… when I am getting angry constantly at a group… or when I see others(especially politcal) constantly digging at each other… I can understand it more because i understand them better… it’s not about hate it’s about lack of self control and an attempt to make yourself feel better…. and I think we all understand that.

Cinema Surreal: La Planète sauvage

Welcome to our very first Cinema Surreal! A new reoccurring segment featuring surreal shorts, trailers, animation, and found footage! We really hope that we can expose you to some hidden treasures!

René Laloux’s La Planète Sauvage (its title changed to Fantastic Planet for the U.S. release) paints an animated tale of humans kept as domesticated pets by an alien race of blue humanoid giants called Traags. While the story does not distinguish itself in the annals of science fiction, the imagination invested in the surreal backdrops, with its eerie creatures and landscapes, does.

The story takes place on the Traags’ planet Ygam, where we follow our narrator, an Om called Terr, from infancy to adulthood, when he escapes his subjugation and incites a revolt. As a French-Czech coproduction, this story had much resonance for its makers as an allegory of Czechoslovakia’s invasion by Russian troops in the late ’60s, and had to be completed in Paris due to political pressure.

The animation technique–moving paper cutouts across backgrounds–contributes to the overall feeling of other-worldliness. Fantastic Planet won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973. In the USA it immediately drew comparisons to Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Planet of the Apes (both the 1968 film and Boule’s 1963 novel). Today, the film can be seen to prefigure much of the work of Hayao Miyazaki at Studio Ghibli (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away) due to its palpable political and social concerns, cultivated imagination, and memorable animation techniques.

(Information taken from Amazon)

Enjoy!

Top 5: Comedians before they were Comedians

1.) Ricky Gervais

2.) Maya Rudolph

3.) Conan O’brien

4.) Sarah Silverman

5.) Chris Rock

BONUS PICS ( I found too many good ones)

6.) Amy Schumer

7.) Louis C.K.

8.) Patton Oswalt

9.) Marc Maron

10.) Tina Fey

Not Stand-up Comedy: Louis C.K.’s “Hello There”

“Hello There” starring Ron Lynch, is The first in a series of surrealist shorts C.K. made for Howie Mandel’s Showtime sketch comedy show. I saw it when I was a friendless junior high school student and had no idea where it came from, or how I might ever find it again, but I loved it. And I never forgot it.

14 years later, following a 4-day netflix marathon of Louie, I embarked on a brief but ravenous search for all things Louis C.K. and there it was. To this day, it is my favorite of all his short films.

-Angie

At 1:12, you can catch a young Louis walking by in a sweater and a pair of sunglasses. ENJOY!

“Hello There”

A Short Film by Louis C.K.

(Taken from Splitsider)

Interim

THE END!

Today concludes our second series, Basic Instinct!

Stay tuned for some pretty cool stuff, including several of

Louis C.K.’s Early Short films!

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Coming Up:

They’re All Going to Laugh at You 7/15-7/25

Named for the famous line in Brian DePalma’s rendition of Carrie, this theme will take a look at anxiety, vouyerism, and fear of judgement as well as unconventional pieces (poetry, short dramedies, prose) by our favorite stand-up comedians.

I want to mention that we have a lot of cool stuff for this collection including several of

Louis C.K.’s early short films!

We can’t wait to share!