Thoughts on Shutter Island [SPOILER ALERT]

So it's been a while now since Shutter Island debuted in theaters. It's also been a while since I've seen the film, so the details of chronology and so on are a bit blurry. But one thing does stand out in my memory: The incredibly clever joke the film plays on the audience.

The film turns on one key question: Is the protagonist insane, or is he trapped in a vast conspiracy? The audience is driven back and forth between these two points for the majority of the film. Indeed, for most of the movie either is at least somewhat plausible. But by the end of the film, we (the audience) have decided. The truth is clear: The protagonist is choosing the coherence of insanity, if only to avoid being a monster.

And this is precisely the joke of it all. We've decided on a reality within the film. But it is a film. It's not real. We, just like the protagonist, have created a particular coherence out of something that is not coherent and not real.

Thus, it is we that are proven to be "insane".

We are beggars all

So I picked up the latest album from Thrice (a band that I have fallen away from over the last few years, but was my absolute favorite in high school). In short: It rocks my socks off. Musically and lyrically, this is standout stuff. The lyrics of one song in particular have really been challenging me, in that they've served as an articulation of some emotions that have been rolling around inside me for quite some time.

Here's the lyrics (all copyrights reserved by Thrice, etc):

Beggars

All you great men of power, you who boast of your feats -
Politicians and entrepreneurs.
Can you safeguard your breath in the night while you sleep?
Keep your heart beating steady and sure?
As you lie in your bed, does the thought haunt your head
That you’re really, rather small?
If there’s one thing I know in this life: we are beggars all.

All you champions of science and rulers of men,
Can you summon the sun from its sleep?
Does the earth seek your counsel on how fast to spin?
Can you shut up the gates of the deep?
Don’t you know that all things hang, as if by a string,
O’er the darkness - poised to fall?
If there’s one thing I know in this life: we are beggars all.

All you big shots that swagger and stride with conceit,
Did you devise how your frame would be formed?
If you’d be raised in a palace, or live out in the streets,
Did you choose the place or the hour you’d be born?
Tell me what can you claim? Not a thing - not your name!
Tell me if you can recall just one thing,
That’s not a gift in this life?

Can you hear what’s been said?
Can you see now that everything’s grace after all?
If there’s one thing I know in this life: we are beggars all.

Promising Genomics [Finished]

I've finished reading Michael Fortun's Promising Genomics. That's the last of my "required reading" for this term -- i.e. reading for school rather than pleasure -- which hopefully means I'll have more time to direct towards my new reading program.

Finished another chapter of Ford's Theology. So far, not much to write home about. I guess I was expecting more of a general introduction to theological terms, discourse, etc. Ford's approach, however, seems much more subjective than that. But I've only scratched the surface, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt thus far.

How to Read Freud [Finished]

Finished How to Read Freud this morning. I found the last couple chapters -- which dealt with the drives -- to be a bit more opaque than the beginning of the book, but that's probably just because I've really only actually read Freud's early works.

Next on my Freud list will be Freud: A Very Short Introduction, by Anthony Storr... But I won't be getting into that book until I finish the others that I am currently reading.

Currently Reading [Part I]

Update:

I've read the first chapter of Prometheus Wired, I've almost finished with the introductory section of Saussure's Course, and I'm about three quarters through How to Read Freud. (Haven't got Theology yet -- though I ordered it through the university library system.)

So far, How to Read Freud seems to be an excellent primer to Freud, although it is certainly not strong enough to stand on its own. Indeed, the book demands an independent, critical reading of Freud's own texts. As far as content goes, I'm increasingly intrigued by the (much simplified, I'm sure) Freudian idea of all love being an attempt to "get back to" the original mother-child sexual configuration, particularly because my own reflections have hinted in that direction (although I did not take my conclusions all the way back into infancy).

As I wrote in my journal last August (and now edit slightly for the sake of public eyes):

"On the whole, I look at life as a series of steadily degrading experiences -- nothing of the future can ever compare to the simplicity of childhood play... The problem, of course, is that childhood, first naïve love, etc are always drowned in desire for the future. One spends childhood imitating and desiring adulthood, and so squanders its simplicity. Likewise, the beauty of the first love lies directly in its prohibition; to consummate it renders it far too earthy, material, and obscene. A consummated first love is no first love at all; it destroys itself while birthing another.

Nostalgia.

Prohibition.

Is not nostalgia a way to relive the prohibitions of childhood and first love -- except that the original prohibitions are exchanged for the prohibition of time? I.e. "You may appreciate it fully now, but only from the distance designated by the intermediary of time!"

Of course, we constantly try to bridge this distance. Every time I've gone longboarding on the Discovery Trail has been an attempt to reclaim the tall dune grass, the smooth pavement, and the cool sea breeze that is fixed into my memory as a record of last August...

And if life is most fully expressed in nostalgia -- that is, the desire for the unreachable, the unattainable... What then?"

Reading plan

I tend to make huge "To Read" lists (emphasis on huge) that I never (really) carry through with. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson by now. But no. I've done it again. However, rather than posting it in its monstrous entirety (allowing you to laugh at me when I fail miserably), I've decided to reveal only three books at a time. Once I finish these three, I will reveal three more. I've organized my list into three columns -- one for a major thinker (Freud, Marx, etc), one for foundational texts of technology/media studies (starting around the beginning of the 20th century), and one for (relatively) contemporary technology/media studies (starting around the beginning of the 21st century). I'll select one text from each column, so that -- hopefully -- my knowledge of general theory, historical developments in technology/media studies, and contemporary technology/media studies will grow as one.

EDIT: I've added a "Theology/Religious Studies" category to the list, making a total of four books to be read at a time.

For now, the theoretical thinker I'm concentrating on is Freud. Even though I've read some of his works for this seminar, I'm going back and starting with a general primer.

Here are the books I'm currently attacking for this project:

How to Read Freud, Joshua Cohen
Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand De Saussure
Prometheus Wired, Darin Barney
Theology: A Very Short Introduction, David F. Ford

Response to Dora

Well, now enough time has elapsed that my initial impressions concerning Dora have faded and my observations have become muddled. So this will be hardly be the essay-length response I envisioned it to be... but in the interest of getting this monkey off my back:

I greatly appreciate how Freud is continually modeling the processes he describes in his own texts. Since I'm new to Freud's work (and psychoanalysis in general) I really could only detect the processes from Dreams (Freud's subtle invocation of secondary revision stood out particularly strong in the "Prefatory Remarks" section) although now that I've finished the text and have been introduced to transference as a psychoanalytic concept, I see that Freud was modeling it in the text all along (or is that just my own secondary revision...?).

All in all, this makes plain the necessity of reading each of Freud's work more than once. Dreams certainly wouldn't have made a bit of sense (especially that infamous "Dark Forest" at the beginning!) if I hadn't gone through it twice (once last term on my own, and again this term for this Freud seminar), and I'm sure that Dora would be much more lucid if I had the time to go through it again as well.

...but alas, that's not going to happen anytime soon. C'est la vie d'un étudiant, non?