Mistah Kurtz, He Dead
Mar. 13th, 2021 09:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloIsn't it odd that one can admire a work of art- even enjoy it- and yet at the same time dislike it.
For instance, I was watching Apocalypse Now yesterday- having fun watching it- and yet when it was over I just wanted to pick it to bits.
There's much that's wrong with Apocalypse now- failures of craft, of reach and imagination, faults of pacing, inconsistencies of tone- but if I liked it I'd be excusing these things as lovable quirks not using them to prove the whole thing worthless...
Which, of course, it's not.
On the contrary it's tremendous. I know it's tremendous. I just can't warm to it...
I made a list of artworks I admire but dislike to see if they had anything in common. At first I thought the thing might be a certain gigantism- but that didn't cover all of them- and failed to account for my love of some very big buildings and books and movies- and in the end I decided that the gigantism was just a symptom of something else- something it's hard to pin-down, something we might well disagree about with reference to individual works- something metaphysical, which I'm going to call cold-heartedness, or misanthropy.
Which goes hand in hand with self-hatred- and at the extreme topples over into nihilism.
Apocalypse Now isn't the worst offender- it has flashes of humour and humanity- but basically- like its anti-hero Kurtz- a hulking great Satan who sits brooding in darkness- it regards its people as ants...
I feel the sting of its contempt.
It dislikes me and I dislike it back.
For instance, I was watching Apocalypse Now yesterday- having fun watching it- and yet when it was over I just wanted to pick it to bits.
There's much that's wrong with Apocalypse now- failures of craft, of reach and imagination, faults of pacing, inconsistencies of tone- but if I liked it I'd be excusing these things as lovable quirks not using them to prove the whole thing worthless...
Which, of course, it's not.
On the contrary it's tremendous. I know it's tremendous. I just can't warm to it...
I made a list of artworks I admire but dislike to see if they had anything in common. At first I thought the thing might be a certain gigantism- but that didn't cover all of them- and failed to account for my love of some very big buildings and books and movies- and in the end I decided that the gigantism was just a symptom of something else- something it's hard to pin-down, something we might well disagree about with reference to individual works- something metaphysical, which I'm going to call cold-heartedness, or misanthropy.
Which goes hand in hand with self-hatred- and at the extreme topples over into nihilism.
Apocalypse Now isn't the worst offender- it has flashes of humour and humanity- but basically- like its anti-hero Kurtz- a hulking great Satan who sits brooding in darkness- it regards its people as ants...
I feel the sting of its contempt.
It dislikes me and I dislike it back.
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Date: 2021-03-13 12:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-03-13 01:32 pm (UTC)But I do admire Conrad.
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Date: 2021-03-13 06:10 pm (UTC)https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dawn-Watch-Maya-Jasanoff/dp/0007553730
I was lucky as an undergrad to hear Conrad's son, John, talk about his father. Fascinating!
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Date: 2021-03-13 07:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-03-13 12:45 pm (UTC)I am in fact curious about the rest of your list.
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Date: 2021-03-13 01:39 pm (UTC)Gulliver's Travels
1984- in fact most of Orwell
Brave New World- in fact most of Huxley
The complete works of Michelangelo (whose fetishism of the impossibly muscular male body seems to me to exude contempt for humanity as it actually is)
I could go on...