The Further Decline of AMK
porti...@yahoo.com
sarcastic remarks on AMK in the past and recently; however, the decline
of AMK during the past few years is considerable. Perhaps it is
partially due to the fact of Stanley Kubrick's death but there have
been so many books published, projects announced and exhibitions about
Kubrick since 1999 that I know we could spend years discussing them. I
think the absence of previously esteemed posters is due to the increase
of adolescent behavior of people here (some of whom are not adolescents
and quite old enough to know better). Also, I do not distinguish the
act of posting comments online from behavior that you display in
public. My infrequent postings on AMK these days is not due to the lack
of topics but due to what posters are likely to snidely comment online
(and off (!) ~ see Professor Geoffrey Cocks' comments on the
elementary or middle school mentality on AMK). I know that some posters
here are proud of their profane, nihilistic comments, perceptions, and
assumptions but I suspect such people who strive to appear so cool
online are not so sophisticated in person. So I was wondering: do you
think AMK might choose civility ~ even for only a month?
Excerpt from "Choosing Civility" by Dr. P. M. Forni
"On being agreeable:
I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble
of liking them a great deal
-Jane Austen
'...One major area of everyday life to grace with agreeableness is
that of conversation. Respect for others entails having an essentially
welcoming attitude toward the words they address to us. This means,
among other things, that contradicting for its own sake should be
banned as utterly uncivil. There are two fundamental abilities to
cultivate in order to be agreeable in conversation.
· The ability to consider that you might be wrong.
· The ability to admit that you don't know.
...At any given moment, on any issue, there is the possibility that You
might be wrong and someone else might be right. Keep that possibility
in mind. Then, if you realize that you are wrong, find the strength to
acknowledge it openly. Do so graciously, without harboring resentment
toward the person who happens to be right. The same awareness and
openness apply to not knowing. We are not omniscient and nobody expects
us to be. So, reconcile yourself with not knowing and admit that fact
to your interlocutors. Training yourself to consider that you might be
wrong and to admit that you don't know will mark a crucial point in
your relationships. Accepting those limitations about yourself will
make you much more accepting of others. You will listen to learn rather
than to react and you will be less likely to attack, to be dismissive,
to doubt good intentions, and to be dogmatic.
One of the most important things you can do to improve your
relationships-both in your private life and at work-is listen to
agree. Again, I am not saying that you have to agree with whatever is
being said (see the rule "Assert Yourself"). Rather, I am encouraging
you to look for possibilities of agreement. Condition yourself to
recognize similarities between your views and those of others. Very
often we do just the opposite: we emphasize our differences in order to
strengthen our identities and show our independence. Sometimes we need
to do that, but most of the time we don't. We may feel good about
ourselves doing it, without realizing that we are alienating our
interlocutors. Keeping an open mind is a good starting point for the
building of meaningful connections. We should, however, make the
further effort of identifying and pursuing points of agreement in the
myriad of words that are addressed to us every day...
...Following the advice of age-old wisdom, choose your battles. Fight
only those that need to be fought and steer clear of all others. Think
of all the physical and nervous energy that an inane argument requires.
Ask yourself. "Do I want to engage in this argument? Is there a
compelling reason to do so? Am I being strong or weak by doing it? Am I
championing a valid cause or am I just being defensive?" We often
entangle ourselves in disputation just because we are afraid that if we
don't, someone else will look good-not the noblest of reasons, to be
sure. So, show your strength: let others shine. That's being agreeable.
We need agreement in our lives because it is gratifying and healing,
because human bonds could not be forged without it, and because it is
the foundation of social harmony. Of course disagreement can be
productive. "A little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing,"
observed Thomas Jefferson. In disagreement alone, however, we couldn't
survive. In ordinary circumstances-at home, at work, at school, in
traffic, at the grocery store, in a restaurant, at the mall, at the
library, in church, on a bus, in a doctor's office, or inside a crowded
elevator-we can make a positive difference in the life of others (and
in our own) by just being pleasant to them. One essential way of being
pleasant is being agreeable. Plentiful rewards await those who manage
to be just that...
Let's learn how to give. But let's also become proficient in the
difficult art of receiving..."
------------------
Genevieve
.
ichorwhip
> I plead guilty to having posted impolite (at best), cynical, and
> sarcastic remarks on AMK in the past and recently;
What about right now? :)
> however, the decline
> of AMK during the past few years is considerable.
I'd venture to agree with you if only you weren't so disagreeable. I'm
about sick to death of the usual fair on AMK to be honest. But you
know what? You can't make me not admire Kubrick's films and the man
himself. And forcing me to not read books and articles and essays
touching on Kubrick or the subjects he tackled or alluded to in his
work is also futile. Most of all, forcing me to not watch his movies
in painstaking detail is straight out. That's my genuine interest in
Kubrick, and nobody can take it away. So I will continue to read and
post on this newsgroup FWIW. AMK used to have much more conflict on it
than it does now, but the big difference is that back then we mostly
all actually liked and respected and half-assed understood Kubrick's
philosophy and vision etcetera despite of how much we all "hated" each
other. Now there is a contingent that likes nothing better than to
stir up shit, espouse the supposed virtues and delights of garbage that
belongs on other newsgroups, and shit all over the real Kubrickphiles
at every turn. I won't stand for that. I guess that's what it means
to have a backbone these days when it comes to Usenet in general. When
you pull out all the various crayons you'll need to label all the
various blue miscreants and yellow lurkers that inhabit this newsgroup
be sure to color me Kubrick.
> Perhaps it is
> partially due to the fact of Stanley Kubrick's death but there have
> been so many books published, projects announced and exhibitions about
> Kubrick since 1999 that I know we could spend years discussing them.
Yeah, and what about your own major thesis on Kubrick "Genevieve"? I
can't believe the hypocrisy you're putting on display here. I believe
your interest in Kubrick is incidental in relation to your own concerns
without spilling the beans entirely. You won't even bother to see all
of his films, or at least you had not the last time the subject came
up. I still grieve that Kubrick died so relatively young. I would be
seeking his approval for what I have had to say about his films on AMK.
And if he said, "Hey ichorwhatever, you're all wrong, fuck the hell
off!" Then I would be a memory; I can take a hint. Unfortunately I'll
never get to find out what he thought if he even would have bothered or
had the time to look at AMK. I do know that Kubrick influences me and
the way I think and see things even if he is gone; there's a certain
artistic sensibility there. To me he is one legitimate genius in a
pantheon of brilliance that is worth contemplating and repeating
forever and ever.
> I
> think the absence of previously esteemed posters is due to the increase
> of adolescent behavior of people here (some of whom are not adolescents
> and quite old enough to know better).
To paraphrase a movie line: These people crawled out of the sewer so
maybe the gutter is where we need to be! I think several of those
"esteemed posters" still lurk AMK but have become too cowardly and
thin-skinned and stuck up to stick up for what they believe or take
interest in. Usenet is a rough and tumble place... But when you're
right, you're right. If you fight the good fight, so to speak, you
will inevitably come out on top.
> Also, I do not distinguish the
> act of posting comments online from behavior that you display in
> public.
Your scolding is only exacerbating the situation Ms. G. I imagine in
person you'd be hitting me over the head with a yardstick right about
now.
> My infrequent postings on AMK these days is not due to the lack
> of topics but due to what posters are likely to snidely comment online
> (and off (!) ~ see Professor Geoffrey Cocks' comments on the
> elementary or middle school mentality on AMK).
I've noticed that you like to try to hide behind him a lot, and I can't
really figure out why for certain. At least I read his book and
understood it. The majority of AMK's current crop refuse to even
consider it. If I were Cocks, I'd be on AMK schooling the hell out of
a bunch of ignorant pricks with hidden agendas or total apathy when it
comes to film criticism, but I guess he has neither the time nor the
inclination to defend his brilliant book on this newsgroup. There are
at least two people on AMK who have. And where do you stand? You've
only said that you've read the book and found it interesting and not
much else besides insinuating that you don't really agree with its
conclusions and that Cocks "accepts" your views on whatever-the-hell,
which means nothing essentially.
> I know that some posters
> here are proud of their profane, nihilistic comments, perceptions, and
> assumptions but I suspect such people who strive to appear so cool
> online are not so sophisticated in person. So I was wondering: do you
> think AMK might choose civility ~ even for only a month?
I don't think your brand of "civility" is possible Sister Superior...
You are fanning a fire when you should be pissing on it. Was Kubrick
himself not profane? Ever see FMJ? Did he ever espouse nihilistic
tendencies in his films? Is this the Mother Teresa newsgroup? You
think you're very "sophisticated" obviously, but you're just as
insulting as anybody else with all your snooty indignation and smug
rationalization. If you think I'm abusive feel free to report me.
I'll gladly defend myself ad nauseum in any sort of Usenet "Trial" you
want to put me through. I'll even change my name to "K" to mark the
occasion. As the double-edged knife is plunged straight into my heart
and twisted twice I think I'll expressionistically scream "Kubrick!"
>
> Excerpt from "Choosing Civility" by Dr. P. M. Forni
>
> "On being agreeable:
>
> I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble
> of liking them a great deal
>
> -Jane Austen
The irony is totally lost here..........
Wha?! "Where in the hell did you get that idea Hal?"
> Think
> of all the physical and nervous energy that an inane argument requires.
> Ask yourself. "Do I want to engage in this argument? Is there a
> compelling reason to do so? Am I being strong or weak by doing it? Am I
> championing a valid cause or am I just being defensive?" We often
> entangle ourselves in disputation just because we are afraid that if we
> don't, someone else will look good-not the noblest of reasons, to be
> sure. So, show your strength: let others shine. That's being agreeable.
I couldn't agree more even if you put me in a concentration camp and
threatened to gas me.
>
> We need agreement in our lives because it is gratifying and healing,
> because human bonds could not be forged without it, and because it is
> the foundation of social harmony. Of course disagreement can be
> productive. "A little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing,"
> observed Thomas Jefferson. In disagreement alone, however, we couldn't
> survive. In ordinary circumstances-at home, at work, at school, in
> traffic, at the grocery store, in a restaurant, at the mall, at the
> library, in church, on a bus, in a doctor's office, or inside a crowded
> elevator-we can make a positive difference in the life of others (and
> in our own) by just being pleasant to them. One essential way of being
> pleasant is being agreeable. Plentiful rewards await those who manage
> to be just that...
> Let's learn how to give. But let's also become proficient in the
> difficult art of receiving..."
> ------------------
You ought to reread this yourself is what I think, and maybe take a few
notes...
"Words of wisdom, Lloyd, my man, words of wisdom."
i
"piop"
ichorwhip
Lord Bullingdon wrote:
> Ichorwhip, I haven't read this "Wolf at The Door" book, but it seems to
> be total bull, just like that article telling how "The Shining" was
> about the killing of native Americans.
Well you just won't know until you read it for yourself will you? A
lot of the ignorant naysaying that goes on about it is just plain
stupid to me. Cocks put a ton of time and research into this book, and
his attention to detail is overwhelming. You'd practically have to
build a career around trying to refute his main arguments, and I'm
saying that that would be a career called "futility."
> Kubrick's films are always
> ambiguous to a certain degree, and that allows people to see almost
> anything in them.
That's true. And if you read the book you'd see that Cocks essentially
agrees with this although his prefacing is much more elaborate and
sophisticated.
> In my opinion, we need some reasonable evidence
> before creating new interpretations of his films.
In my opinion, we need to read what we wish to criticize before
criticizing it.
> Just because the
> decoration of the Overlook Hotel had a lot of indian tapestry doesn't
> mean the movie was about the genocide of native americans!
There is anecdotal information from co-screenwriter Diane Johnson that
the Indian genocide theme was at least discussed during the production
of the film. I for one don't think you have to be told that things in
Kubrick's films are THERE before being able to discuss and consider
them. Kubrick himself said something, rather facetiously, to the
effect that he was amazed at how clever he was looking back at some of
the things that were noticed in his films. This is to say that
unconscious and chance influences played a role in his art. You can
look back in the AMK archive for a lot more of this if you're really
interested. Search: "Wolf at the Door" to find the threads I'm talking
about.
> Anyway, is Genevieve really writing some kind of book or thesis about
> Kubrick? What do you know about it? Why is it a secret?
Let her reveal that if she wishes. She's prolly ready to eviscerate me
enough as it is.
>
> L.B.
Your Pal Brian
> porti...@yahoo.com chastised:
> > I plead guilty to having posted impolite (at best), cynical, and
> > sarcastic remarks on AMK in the past and recently;
>
> What about right now? :)
>
> > however, the decline
> > of AMK during the past few years is considerable.
>
> I'd venture to agree with you if only you weren't so disagreeable. I'm
> about sick to death of the usual fair on AMK to be honest. But you
> know what? You can't make me not admire Kubrick's films and the man
> himself.
I'm not entirely convinced she was attempting to.
Brian
ichorwhip
I'm not entirely convinced that you're deliberately taking me out of
context and "missing the point." All I'm saying is that I'm in the
right newsgroup for what I'm interested in. I think you are too FWIW.
So I defend Kubrick, sometimes vociferously depending on which "idiot"
I'm having to deal with. Also, is it really worth having my
metaphorical ears boxed for occasionally acting a fool? I usually go
for the laughs, you know. Trying to make happy out of so much
weltschmerz: a capital crime no doubt... Gen talks snidely about
having some sort of civil decorum on AMK and that works for me to a
certain extent, but I'm not going to stifle my occasional "adolescent"
observations when they are germaine to the subject. Kubrick himself
wasn't above using "reacharound" and "suck the chrome off a trailer
hitch" etcetera in his movies. These terms would prolly be considered
poor form in alt.lives-of-saints, but maybe you see the point.
"Give 'em some smoke."
i
"piop"
Boaz
> I'm having to deal with. Also, is it really worth having my
> metaphorical ears boxed for occasionally acting a fool? I usually go
> for the laughs, you know. Trying to make happy out of so much
> weltschmerz: a capital crime no doubt... Gen talks snidely about
> having some sort of civil decorum on AMK and that works for me to a
> certain extent, but I'm not going to stifle my occasional "adolescent"
> observations when they are germaine to the subject. Kubrick himself
> wasn't above using "reacharound" and "suck the chrome off a trailer
> hitch" etcetera in his movies. These terms would prolly be considered
> poor form in alt.lives-of-saints, but maybe you see the point.
>
> "Give 'em some smoke."
> i
> "piop"
Hopefully, Genevieve's remarks aren't aimed entirely at you, Ich. That
would be disengenuous on her part. By the same token, I hope she isn't
trying to single me out as well. Both of us tend to use crude humor in
our posts, though you do it a bit more than I. However, that is
irrelevant to the issue. Just who are the perpetrators of this bad
behavior, Gen? Is it one of the veteran posters who occasionally goes
coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs and graffiti-tags the newsgroup with his
outbursts, vacillating between childish behavior, expressing contempt
for Kubrick and espousing his fundamentalist Christian views with the
occasional anti-Semitic remarks tossed in for good measure? Or is it
the neo-fascist who makes sure the bi-polar express he is riding
arrives on time while making his hatemongering whistle-stops at various
AMK posts? Or is it the "honest" white supremacist who makes those rare
but memorable cross-posting guest appearances in order to spread his
lies? Or is it, perhaps, the newest arrivals of arrested development
types who resort to high school level remarks at practically every
post? Or is it just the "usual suspects" of "valued contributors" who
have been here as long as the seven years I've been posting? It may
help, Gen, if you were to specify just who it is among us at AMK that
are the guilty party.
As for your own "sarcasm," I would prefer if you did cut loose once in
a while with a Dorothy Parker-like quip instead of coming off like some
tight-ass high school teacher or, worse, some parochial school nun who
has to crack everyone's knuckles as a way of keeping them in line. This
isn't some PTA gathering; this is a newsgroup where everyone should be
able to let their hair down now and then, and maybe even be allowed to
lift their leg and rip a good one too. The only respect we need to show
to one another is to "pass the bottle" around, as it were, and avoid
wiping off the top before we take a swig.
I also take umbrage with your comments regarding Professor Cocks. I
agree with Ichorwhip in that you hide behind him whenever it is
convenient for you. I don't care if you "disagree" with what he has
said in his book, or if he "accepts" your disagreement. But it would
have been fair and decent of you to have stepped in and offered some
support when Ich and I were getting hammered by a lot of ignorant,
baseless comments and disgusting, deplorable remarks and vicious
attacks by people who refused to read his book. And that includes
attacks on Professor Cocks and the childish use of his name. That is
when you could have stepped out of your ivory tower, gotten on your
high horse and posted your "lecture" (or is it the Sermon on the AMK
Mount?). If you want to invoke his name as if you were members of the
same fraternal order of academic types, that particular time would have
been appropriate. And I would have liked to have read what it was that
you "disagreed" about it; at least it would have come from somebody who
also read the book. This "too little, too late" approach is not only
silly, it is insulting.
Now I suppose you will run and hide, not making an appearance on AMK
until maybe next Ground Hog Day. I would prefer it if you continued to
post here, but, for crying out loud, don't be such a prig about it.
You've had a lot of good posts in the past regarding Kubrick's films.
And you have always kept us up to date on any changes going on with the
Christiane Kubrick website, and now there is Katharina's site that you
can offer your views on as well. You've made it known your knowledge
and appreciation of good art, and that has always brightened up the
newsgroup. And you've also let it be known that you liked FMJ. It is
good to know that an intelligent, educated woman can find the qualities
in that film and discuss it as articulately as you have done.
You have been a part of this newsgroup as long as Ichorwhip and I have,
which is about seven years now. Sad to say, we didn't discover this
great place until Kubrick died. So we have all seen this newsgroup in
better days. You brought up the various books and exhibits that keep
the Kubrick legacy alive; I agree, let's discuss them. Don't play
moderator and disappear after one or two posts, stay here and help keep
this newsgroup from being more than a shadow of its former self. In
other words, be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Boaz
("No kicking, biting or scratching...")
Matthew Dickinson
hahaha
blue
and just have to be treated as such, all people moderate their words on
newsgroups, some people who can't speak very well in public might find
they can actually have a voice on a newsgroup, however offensive that
voice might be.
I think this fact just needs to be accepted and worked around, these
people aren't any genuine threat, their opinions might be banal,
offensive and annoying but they're just that - opinions and Kubrick
himself liked to canvass a variety of those before dropping to a
conclusion.
I hope people don't leave because of bad behaviour, tolerating these
people is easy becuase you know that they would never really say this
sort of thing to your face. At least it's real emotion and we can get a
chance to talk to some people honestly for once.
I think rather than complaining people should just roll with the
punches, I like coming back to this newsgroup after long periods away at
work and hearing the same old voices.
Dom.
MickeyMoop
atop the precious spot in the garden tomb and monographs published and
commentaries translated. I can't find the bloody book by Professor
Cocks but I'm sure it's very nice and tasteful. Brother Jackson has
come thru his adventures in fine fettle. Let us say grace, Sister
Portia. {Is the grave a bequest to the nation? Who's to say in 2506
when a Vogon A-3 motorway is surveyed thru the grounds?}
MickeyMoop
the Mall, Private Pie.
MickeyMoop
ichorwhip
MickeyMoop wrote:
> I want her entire life to be an Act of Goodness, with wreaths tossed
> atop the precious spot in the garden tomb and monographs published and
> commentaries translated. I can't find the bloody book by Professor
> Cocks but I'm sure it's very nice and tasteful.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0820471151/103-0542593-0857418?st=%2A&v=glance&n=283155
Matthew Dickinson
> I want you to step away from that statue and place it at the foot of
> the Mall, Private Pie.
>
silly bitch, your weapons cannot harm me! don't you know who the fuck I
am? I'm the Juggernaut bitch!!
Matthew Dickinson
porti...@yahoo.com
>threatened to gas me.
There are so many assumptions and statements that are just plain wrong
in your message but how can I even address them when you end your
message with a statement like this? This is a perfect example of the
issue(s) that I am addressing. You _know_ that I have an Austrian
background; I am quite insulted when you throw around words like
concentration camp, gassing, or eviscerating people...especially when
certain members of my family (due to their Austro-Slavic background &
dissent) were almost sent to a camp during 1930s. Throwing around words
such as these is not casual Usenet speak - it is viscous. Philosophers
and writers (not just Buddhists & Christians) have spoken about the
importance of practicing mindful and thoughtful speech for centuries.
BTW, Ich, you're not funny at all. Look to Oscar Wilde on how to write
(with great wit) about vulgarity without being vulgar.
M. Genevieve
P.S. I became a Kubrick fan at age 10 and have seen ALL of his films
countless times.
P.P.S. I'll write to Boaz later
porti...@yahoo.com
> about sick to death of the usual fair on AMK to be honest. But you
> know what? You can't make me not admire Kubrick's films and the man
> himself.
>I'm not entirely convinced she was attempting to.
You are absolutely, correct, Brian. I was not asking Ichorwhip or
anyone else NOT to admire Stanley Kubrick's films.
Genevieve
ichorwhip
That's right, entirely miss the point. I was expecting as much.
ichorwhip
porti...@yahoo.com wrote:
> >I couldn't agree more even if you put me in a concentration camp and
> >threatened to gas me.
>
> There are so many assumptions and statements that are just plain wrong
> in your message but how can I even address them when you end your
> message with a statement like this?
Oh you could, but you're trying to save time I guess....
> This is a perfect example of the
> issue(s) that I am addressing. You _know_ that I have an Austrian
> background; I am quite insulted when you throw around words like
> concentration camp, gassing, or eviscerating people...especially when
> certain members of my family (due to their Austro-Slavic background &
> dissent) were almost sent to a camp during 1930s.
Almost? Good thing they escaped...
> Throwing around words
> such as these is not casual Usenet speak - it is viscous.
Not nearly as "viscious" as it could have been. You want to sidestep
and chide me further Gen? So be it, and I forget already.... BTW, I
made the Nazi and concentration camp statements in general response to
the negative reception Cocks' book has gotten here at AMK. It's all
about the Holocaust in case you forgot. I very much resent you
insinuating that I am insensitive to the plight of Holocaust victims
BTW, but I'm sure that matters not to you.
> Philosophers
> and writers (not just Buddhists & Christians) have spoken about the
> importance of practicing mindful and thoughtful speech for centuries.
HA! Like you are practitioner. You are insulting me with this
condescending sophistry...
> BTW, Ich, you're not funny at all.
:( That hurt! You're not right at all. Everything has to be on your
terms.
> Look to Oscar Wilde on how to write
> (with great wit) about vulgarity without being vulgar.
Like I'm too ignorant to know Wilde? I don't think I need your
instructions, lady. You're only pissed at me is all, and you totally
set yourself up for it.
> M. Genevieve
>
> P.S. I became a Kubrick fan at age 10 and have seen ALL of his films
> countless times.
Good! I was no doubt mistaken, but I was almost certain you'd said at
one point in the past that you'd never bothered to see FMJ. I take it
back!
>
> P.P.S. I'll write to Boaz later
"And this concerns me because......?" Why don't you do something on
AMK besides bitch about AMK? Even Lard Boilingdung comes up with more
on-topic posts than you do. But no, you just had to claim "ownership"
and chastise and sneer...
"When you point one finger, three point back at you."
i
"piop"
gco...@albion.edu
I would be quite happy to contribute what I can to AMK since I am
always open to--and indeed grateful for--constructive criticism. But I
don't see how I can respond when "Lord Bullingdon" (among others)
characterizes my research as "total bull" without having even read my
book.
Read and fire away, gentlemen.
Geoff Cocks
Lord Bullingdon wrote:
> Ichorwhip, I haven't read this "Wolf at The Door" book, but it seems to
> be total bull, just like that article telling how "The Shining" was
> about the killing of native Americans. Kubrick's films are always
> ambiguous to a certain degree, and that allows people to see almost
> anything in them. In my opinion, we need some reasonable evidence
> before creating new interpretations of his films. Just because the
> decoration of the Overlook Hotel had a lot of indian tapestry doesn't
> mean the movie was about the genocide of native americans!
>
> Anyway, is Genevieve really writing some kind of book or thesis about
> Kubrick? What do you know about it? Why is it a secret?
>
> L.B.
iam...@hotmail.com
> Read and fire away, gentlemen.
>
> Geoff Cocks
>
>
Granted. But most of the folks here do know the movies, inside out,
backwards, upside down, and even a little sideways. Maybe even better
than you do. So it's a little too convenient for my tastes to ignore
them without reading your book. So as some here have reacted badly
(very badly) to the premise of your book, I invite you to get down and
dirty, spill more of the beans in your book with the folks here that
argueably are experts on your source material, SK's movies, and duke it
out. Yes, you will deal with childish, immature, and insulting
behaviour, but it's the nature of newsgroups. Let's be honest, there's
lots of that behaviour among academics anyways, it's just dressed up a
little better. Society's all have that, that one of the points of
Barry Lyndon. You have written and published a book that I think
mainly academics and historians will read. I suggest that your work
will have more audience if you contribute more here, instead of sending
the posters off to read your book. They'll do that anyways if you
provoke them enough.
Best,
Steve
*******
porti...@yahoo.com
> such as these is not casual Usenet speak - it is viscous.
Not nearly as "viscious" as it could have been. You want to sidestep
and chide me further Gen? So be it, and I forget already.... BTW, I
made the Nazi and concentration camp statements in general response to
the negative reception Cocks' book has gotten here at AMK. It's all
about the Holocaust in case you forgot.
Your statements about me putting you in a concentration camp and
gassing you were about Prof. Cocks' book? I do not know how I could
intuit this from your remarks but if that is the case, if that is truly
what you were referring to and not my Austrian background which I am
admittedly very defensive about, then I apologize for having
misunderstood you. My initial post wasn't about the Holocaust, however;
it was about civility. Or perhaps about the impossibility of having a
civil discussion about civility on the AMK. Obviously, many of us here
have conflicting ideas about Netiquette or if there should be any
decorum at all.
> I very much resent you
>insinuating that I am insensitive to the plight of Holocaust victims
BTW, but I'm sure that matters not to you.
I was not insinuating this- at least I didn't mean to but I thought
your words about concentration camps and gassing were directed at me
and my family given that one of my familty members was denigrated as a
Nazi on AMK.
> Philosophers
> and writers (not just Buddhists & Christians) have spoken about the
> importance of practicing mindful and thoughtful speech for centuries.
HA! Like you are practitioner. You are insulting me with this
condescending sophistry...
You are correct. I have failed miserably but I am trying to practice
these concepts; however, I am not insulting you here.
> BTW, Ich, you're not funny at all.
:( That hurt! You're not right at all. Everything has to be on your
terms.
I was wrong here. Sometimes you are funny but you used to be funnier.
And I should say that you can be very charming & sweet. But you have
been so...mean lately.
> Look to Oscar Wilde on how to write
> (with great wit) about vulgarity without being vulgar.
Like I'm too ignorant to know Wilde? I don't think I need your
instructions, lady. You're only pissed at me is all, and you totally
set yourself up for it.
I didn't say that you were ignorant of Wilde's writing. We should all
"look to" Wilde and other writers like Nabokov who could satirize
eloquently not that a little Burroughs now & then isn't fine, too.
> M. Genevieve
> P.S. I became a Kubrick fan at age 10 and have seen ALL of his films
> countless times.
"And this concerns me because......?" Why don't you do something on
AMK besides bitch about AMK? Even Lard Boilingdung comes up with more
on-topic posts than you do. But no, you just had to claim "ownership"
and chastise and sneer...
"When you point one finger, three point back at you."
i
"piop"
These are unfair remarks and I don't know what you mean about claiming
ownership.
Genevieve
Matthew Dickinson
Wordsmith
Matthew Dickinson wrote:
> ichorwhip, why the hell are you fighting with Genevieve?
They love each other. *chortle*
W : )
Wordsmith
gco...@albion.edu wrote:
> Hello again,
>
> I would be quite happy to contribute what I can to AMK since I am
> always open to--and indeed grateful for--constructive criticism. But I
> don't see how I can respond when "Lord Bullingdon" (among others)
> characterizes my research as "total bull" without having even read my
> book.
>
> Read and fire away, gentlemen.
>
> Geoff Cocks
Your book is on my "must read" list, Prof. I'm going to get to it one
o' these years.
If it's provoking this much controversy, it's gotta be worth reading.
W : )
porti...@yahoo.com
Please correct me if I misunderstood/misinterpreted your message to
Prof. Cocks; but do you think he should dumb down the discussion of his
book for the purpose of having a discussion on AMK?
>Yes, you will deal with childish, immature, and insulting behaviour, but it's the nature of >newsgroups.
Is it? Why does it have to be? One could say the same thing about
certain television programs (and films), certain newspapers, and other
mediums that disseminate information and entertainment but why appeal
to the worst parts of human nature? Why watch Fox News when you can
watch The News Hour or the BBC? (or The Daily Show, of course).
Genevieve
porti...@yahoo.com
> agree with Ichorwhip in that you hide behind him whenever it is
> convenient for you. I don't care if you "disagree" with what he has
> said in his book, or if he "accepts" your disagreement. But it would
> have been fair and decent of you to have stepped in and offered some
> support when Ich and I were getting hammered by a lot of ignorant,
> baseless comments and disgusting, deplorable remarks and vicious
> attacks by people who refused to read his book. And that includes
> attacks on Professor Cocks and the childish use of his name. That is
> when you could have stepped out of your ivory tower, gotten on your
> high horse and posted your "lecture" (or is it the Sermon on the AMK
> Mount?). If you want to invoke his name as if you were members of the
> same fraternal order of academic types, that particular time would have
> been appropriate. And I would have liked to have read what it was that
> you "disagreed" about it; at least it would have come from somebody who
> also read the book. This "too little, too late" approach is not only
> silly, it is insulting.
Very unfair comments considering my defense of Professor Cocks. One
example:
8
From: portia_m...@yahoo.com - view profile
Date: Thurs, Dec 15 2005 4:34 pm
Not yet rated
show options
Dear Prof. Cocks:
This group encourages prolonged adolescence among men which is why one
rarely sees many women posting messages. I cannot respond to imbeciles
but I will continue to recommend your excellent book "The Wolf at the
Door: Stanley Kubrick, History, and the Holocaust " to the lurkers out
there.
Best wishes,
M. Genevieve
9
From: gco...@albion.edu - view profile
Date: Fri, Dec 16 2005 9:28 am
Not yet rated
show options
Dear Genevieve,
Thank you.
Geoff
- Show quoted text -
And there are other and better examples in the archive. Look up the
name of Professor Cocks' book and Genevieve, and/or look up his name
and Genevieve. I am constantly promoting his book on AMK (and
elsewhere).
Genevieve
iam...@hotmail.com
Thanks for asking. I was in a rush when I wrote it. So let me
clarify. I do not think Geoff should dumb down the discussion of the
Holocost in SK's films on AMK. On the contrary. Many of the posters
on this newsgroup are very intelligent and know an awful lot about SK's
movies. As such, I invite Geoff to respond to some of the posts on AMK
about the Holocost in SK's films, perhaps even to start a few of his
own, and I request that he do more than to say read the book first. I
grant, it would be preferable and more convenient for folks to read his
book first, but I don't see that as an exclusive requirement that
prevents Geoff from chiming in here to engage in some of the
discussions about the Holocost in SK's movies with folks on AMK that
know alot about the movies and that are passionate about them.
*****
Is it?
****
Based on my experience, yes.
****
Why does it have to be? One could say the same thing about
certain television programs (and films), certain newspapers, and other
mediums that disseminate information and entertainment but why appeal
to the worst parts of human nature? Why watch Fox News when you can
watch The News Hour or the BBC? (or The Daily Show, of course).
****
There are no good answers to these questions, Gen.
Best,
Steve
****
Mike Jackson
gco...@albion.edu at gco...@albion.edu on 4/18/06 7:50 AM:busted out this
wacky shit:
> Hello again,
>
> I would be quite happy to contribute what I can to AMK since I am
> always open to--and indeed grateful for--constructive criticism. But I
> don't see how I can respond when "Lord Bullingdon" (among others)
> characterizes my research as "total bull" without having even read my
> book.
>
> Read and fire away, gentlemen.
>
> Geoff Cocks
Well you can't go by Lord Bullshit. He's said things so vile about Kubrick
in here that any civilized culture someone would have taken him out and had
him shot by now. Or baring that ripped off his balls so he can't contaminate
the rest of the world.
As to criticism about your book, don't take it so personal Geoff. Or is that
short for Geoffrey? I sort of get a poopy whiff when I meet a Geoff because
it's sort of like a Jeff or Jeffrey that's gone all rootin tootin
highfalutin on us, but since it's just plain old "Cocks" and not say "Von
Cocks" or "Cocks, Esq." I guess I can give you some benefit of the doubt.
The gist that's been put forth here is that your book implies "The Shining"
has something to do with genocide American Indians makes me not want to even
check you book out of the library much less buy it. To paraphrase Jack
Torrance I have to ask "Are you out of your fucking mind?" in spite of all
that book learnin'.
But hey, keep at it, maybe Oprah will endorse it and you'll live happily
ever after next door to Dr. Phil or something. Hell you've got it made
writing books - beating out that competition - and me being patronizing! Is
the egg showing or what?
I don't wish you ill, I'm just sick of being brow beaten that if I don't
read your fucking book then I'm not a good Kubrick fan or something.
And by the way I, Michael Jackson, am the one that made the jokes on your
name. I know a thing or two about having an odd name and have endured jokes
that I'm sure are worse. I'm delighted to find someone with a funnier name
than mine! I'm damn sorry if I offended you. I just apologize like hell.
Besides I've always found that writing comes from a great inner pain.
And I ask you can you have a Kubrick film without a some potty humor? If you
can't stand the stink...
--
"It was such a lovely day, I thought it was a pity to get up."
-- W. Somerset Maugham
Mike Jackson
porti...@yahoo.com at porti...@yahoo.com on 4/14/06 2:09 PM busted out
this Mickey Mouse bullshit:
> I plead guilty to having posted impolite (at best), cynical, and
> sarcastic remarks on AMK in the past and recently; however, the decline
> of AMK during the past few years is considerable. Perhaps it is
> partially due to the fact of Stanley Kubrick's death but there have
> been so many books published, projects announced and exhibitions about
> Kubrick since 1999 that I know we could spend years discussing them. I
> think the absence of previously esteemed posters is due to the increase
> of adolescent behavior of people here (some of whom are not adolescents
> and quite old enough to know better). Also, I do not distinguish the
> act of posting comments online from behavior that you display in
> public. My infrequent postings on AMK these days is not due to the lack
> of topics but due to what posters are likely to snidely comment online
> (and off (!) ~ see Professor Geoffrey Cocks' comments on the
> elementary or middle school mentality on AMK).
Kee-rist, I take a little vacation and what do I come home to but people
actually dumb enough to the human turd Lord Bullshit and complaining about
'civility' on the NG.
And now Gen has her nose bent out of joint. Gee, now bad I feel for making
dick jokes about Cocks.
Darned if I want to be the one that runt oft our only girl from the
clubhouse with my big old dirty mouth. Especially you being such a shinkin'
violet to all our smirkin' toilet.
I mean even you and Boaz seem to be on the outs and I had you two pegged to
be such a mutual admiration society that, well, just between you, me and the
fence post, I thought you two'd sooner or later get a room or sumthin. But
whoa! Look out! You two look like you might reenact Oleanna or something!
I guess you think any of my erudition on the subject is just plain rude, but
for all I've heard about here about Cocks' theories on the films of Stanley
Kubrick I've formed the opinion that Cocks' theories suck quite a large
quantity of dead dingo dicks. I guess we'll just have to disagree to
disagree.
But gorsh darnit all, it's so hard though being part of the great unwashed
outside academia or outside the bizness where opinions REALLY matter!
At least you can lay down your purdy little head on the pillow tonight
knowing how much smarter you is and how much more phlegmatic and
philosophical yous are than the rest of us philippic philistines.
Why the whole affair is as queer as a crock of philadelphus...
[SNIDE ASIDE: Man is there a lot of p-words or what? It's a pip!]
> I know that some posters here are proud of their profane, nihilistic comments,
> perceptions, and assumptions but I suspect such people who strive to appear so
> cool online are not so sophisticated in person. So I was wondering: do you
> think AMK might choose civility ~ even for only a month?
Oh to be civil! Oh behave! Your disambiguations are always so charming! It
makes me weep that I'm such a loutish brute... Or is that brutish lout? I'm
so much of either I can't remember.
But. Hey, I don't mind if you don't like my manners, I don't like them
myself. They are pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings. I
don't mind your ritzing me drinking your lunch out of a bottle. But don't
waste your time trying to cross-examine me! Wha? Oh. Sorry, I must have
taken the big nap or something. You screwy dames bring out the various louts
and brutes in me.
Of course we can't even have a civil war of words anymore, it's such a passé
nomenclature!
Get hip with the times and learn to let your lips set sail on the wild
insurgency!
> Excerpt from "Choosing Civility" by Dr. P. M. Forni
>
> "On being agreeable:
>
> I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble
> of liking them a great deal
>
> -Jane Austen
"Jane Austen? Why I go so far as to say that any library is a good library
that does not contain a volume by Jane Austen. Even if it contains no other
book."
-- Mark Twain
> '...One major area of everyday life to grace with agreeableness is
> that of conversation. Respect for others entails having an essentially
> welcoming attitude toward the words they address to us. This means,
> among other things, that contradicting for its own sake should be
> banned as utterly uncivil. There are two fundamental abilities to
> cultivate in order to be agreeable in conversation.
>
> · The ability to consider that you might be wrong.
>
> · The ability to admit that you don't know.
What an unpatriotic dig at our Fearless Leader! For shame!
> ...At any given moment, on any issue, there is the possibility that You
> might be wrong and someone else might be right. Keep that possibility
> in mind. Then, if you realize that you are wrong, find the strength to
> acknowledge it openly. Do so graciously, without harboring resentment
> toward the person who happens to be right. The same awareness and
> openness apply to not knowing. We are not omniscient and nobody expects
> us to be. So, reconcile yourself with not knowing and admit that fact
> to your interlocutors. Training yourself to consider that you might be
> wrong and to admit that you don't know will mark a crucial point in
> your relationships. Accepting those limitations about yourself will
> make you much more accepting of others. You will listen to learn rather
> than to react and you will be less likely to attack, to be dismissive,
> to doubt good intentions, and to be dogmatic.
It's all so clear to me now...the whole thing...
> One of the most important things you can do to improve your
> relationships-both in your private life and at work-is listen to
> agree. Again, I am not saying that you have to agree with whatever is
> being said (see the rule "Assert Yourself"). Rather, I am encouraging
> you to look for possibilities of agreement. Condition yourself to
> recognize similarities between your views and those of others. Very
> often we do just the opposite: we emphasize our differences in order to
> strengthen our identities and show our independence. Sometimes we need
> to do that, but most of the time we don't. We may feel good about
> ourselves doing it, without realizing that we are alienating our
> interlocutors. Keeping an open mind is a good starting point for the
> building of meaningful connections. We should, however, make the
> further effort of identifying and pursuing points of agreement in the
> myriad of words that are addressed to us every day...
Or we could just down a few Valium and Ritalin!
Because we're good enough and we're smart enough and gosh darnit
~ we're worth it!
> ...Following the advice of age-old wisdom, choose your battles. Fight
> only those that need to be fought and steer clear of all others. Think
> of all the physical and nervous energy that an inane argument requires.
> Ask yourself. "Do I want to engage in this argument? Is there a
> compelling reason to do so? Am I being strong or weak by doing it? Am I
> championing a valid cause or am I just being defensive?" We often
> entangle ourselves in disputation just because we are afraid that if we
> don't, someone else will look good-not the noblest of reasons, to be
> sure. So, show your strength: let others shine. That's being agreeable.
Well shore, some people 'shine' and some don't!
Say like if someone cuts the cheese. Well, maybe things that happen leave
other kinds of traces behind. Not things that anyone can notice, but things
that people who 'shine' can see!
Just like they can see things that haven't happened yet. Well, sometimes
they can see things that happened a loooong time ago! I think a lot of
things happened right here in this particular newsgroup over the years.
And not all of 'em was good!
> We need agreement in our lives because it is gratifying and healing,
> because human bonds could not be forged without it, and because it is
> the foundation of social harmony. Of course disagreement can be
> productive. "A little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing,"
> observed Thomas Jefferson.
Well, old Tommy Jefferson knew a thing or two 'bout being productive!
He was a hard dog to keep on the porch!
> In disagreement alone, however, we couldn't survive. In ordinary
> circumstances-at home, at work, at school, in traffic, at the grocery store,
> in a restaurant, at the mall, at the library, in church, on a bus, in a
> doctor's office, or inside a crowded elevator-we can make a positive
> difference in the life of others (and in our own) by just being pleasant to
> them.
And of course keepin the SBDs to a minimum. Especially in the elevator.
> One essential way of being pleasant is being agreeable. Plentiful rewards
> await those who manage to be just that...
> Let's learn how to give. But let's also become proficient in the
> difficult art of receiving..."
> ------------------
>
> Genevieve
Ah the difficult art of receiving.
It's not easy being the catcher. Or so I hear. Not that there's anything
wrong with that!
Man, did I ever pick the wrong week to quit sniffing glue...
--
The meek will inherit the earth -- if that's OK with you.
Boaz
All well and good, Genevieve. I recall your post a year ago
recommending it. Do you remember the review I copied and pasted shortly
thereafter? Apparently not. Do you recall when you asked me to "review"
the book myself and I said I would (and did)? Apparently not there
either. All you seem to recall is what suits you for the moment.
I later read Professor Cocks' book in August, and I have been a strong
advocate (or is it avocaat?) of it since. Or do you need to re-check
the archives to see my posts where I reviewed, endorsed and even
"chewed the fat" with the Professor Cocks as well? Do you also need to
re-check the archives where I got shit on by a large number of "valued
contributors" who didn't read the book and who still refuse to read it.
All I am asking you, Gen, is where the hell were you when I could have
used a little support. You're mighty good at giving lip service to
Cocks (no Freudian pun intended), but unless you were on a very long
vacation, far away from any Internet connection, back in August and
November, I cannot imagine you not noticing the firestorm that lit up
AMK those two times.
If you'd like to get back on my good side Gen, you might do well to use
your energy to tear out a few assholes to some of the assholes here who
are vehemently opposed to even the very mention of Professor Cocks'
name, let alone his book.
I take it back. You don't have to get on my good side, Gen. But it
would be greatly appreciated if you knock it off with me. I will knock
it off with you too. We are on the same side as far as defending the
book and its author. Bog Almighty!
Boaz
("There is also a certain man, a writer of subversive literature...")
porti...@yahoo.com
Boaz,
I have sent you an email.
Genevieve
Matthew Dickinson
> to the worst parts of human nature? Why watch Fox News when you can
> watch The News Hour or the BBC? (or The Daily Show, of course).
Or why watch ANY TV news for that matter...
Matthew Dickinson
This is all very funny! I'm sorry, but why are we arguing about this
professor again?
Matthew Dickinson
> I have a TV, but I don't have an antenna or cable....I use it as a
> monitor for watching movies, nothing else. I think TV is a waste of
> time, I mean, the amount of information that you get by watching 30
> minutes of TV can be learned in 3 minutes on the internet if you go to
> the right places.
>
> L.B.
>
eggzactly
ichorwhip
porti...@yahoo.com wrote:
<snip>
>
> Your statements about me putting you in a concentration camp and
> gassing you were about Prof. Cocks' book? I do not know how I could
> intuit this from your remarks but if that is the case, if that is truly
> what you were referring to and not my Austrian background which I am
> admittedly very defensive about, then I apologize for having
> misunderstood you.
I am not making this personal Gen, or rather I'm trying not to. I
never once brought up your ethnic background. The comment wasn't even
remotely directed at "you" if you'll look back and see that I made the
admittedly coarse but pointed remark in response to the "Choosing
Civility" essay that you quoted. It was some rather drastic irony I
suppose if you weren't aware of how I have "duked" it out over Cocks'
book here on AMK.
> My initial post wasn't about the Holocaust, however;
> it was about civility.
Yes, the two things are mutually exclusive, but you did bring up Cocks'
book etcetera. The "elevator doors" were wide open as far as I could
tell.
> Or perhaps about the impossibility of having a
> civil discussion about civility on the AMK. Obviously, many of us here
> have conflicting ideas about Netiquette or if there should be any
> decorum at all.
Didn't I already agree with you in principle on this? I just don't
like the idea of censorship, at all. This is one reason why I refuse
to <plonk> anyone,_ever_, no matter how despicable they are.
>
> > I very much resent you
> >insinuating that I am insensitive to the plight of Holocaust victims
> BTW, but I'm sure that matters not to you.
>
> I was not insinuating this- at least I didn't mean to but I thought
> your words about concentration camps and gassing were directed at me
> and my family given that one of my familty members was denigrated as a
> Nazi on AMK.
No, I'm sorry you took it the wrong way. I only vaguely recall your
ethnic background Gen, and it is entirely immaterial here.
>
> > Philosophers
> > and writers (not just Buddhists & Christians) have spoken about the
> > importance of practicing mindful and thoughtful speech for centuries.
>
> HA! Like you are practitioner. You are insulting me with this
> condescending sophistry...
>
> You are correct. I have failed miserably but I am trying to practice
> these concepts; however, I am not insulting you here.
Very well, forgive my own sensitivity if you please.
>
> > BTW, Ich, you're not funny at all.
>
> :( That hurt! You're not right at all. Everything has to be on your
>
> terms.
>
> I was wrong here. Sometimes you are funny but you used to be funnier.
> And I should say that you can be very charming & sweet. But you have
> been so...mean lately.
I think you're being a tad selective in how you're interpreting my
latest posts on this newsgroup although I do appreciate the
semi-retraction. I like the term "battle-hardened" a bit better than
"mean." I am not mean. Have you been lurking all along these past
several months?
<snip>
>> "And this concerns me because......?" Why don't you do something on
>> AMK besides bitch about AMK? Even Lard Boilingdung comes up with more
>> on-topic posts than you do. But no, you just had to claim "ownership"
>> and chastise and sneer...
>> "When you point one finger, three point back at you."
>> i
>> "piop"
>
> These are unfair remarks and I don't know what you mean about claiming
> ownership.
When you suddenly spring on the scene with a post that pretty much
amounts to a chiding, it looks like you're trying to set rules and
conditions. In other words, "ownership..." It was aggravating, and I
responded with as much grace as I could muster. I do beg your
forgiveness if I personally offended you, but when you offend others
knowingly or otherwise, things will negatively escalate until an
agreement or a detente can be reached. Now that we have sort of
settled things a bit, I'm hoping that we can get back to something
really interesting and worthwhile to the Kubrick group. What do you
say?
"New way? What's this about a new way?"
i
"piop"
gco...@albion.edu
I was only concerned that brief mention of my arguments might not be
convincing enough without the fuller explanation and documentation in
my book.
But you make a valid point about adapting what I have to say to a
different medium and it is true that everyone who participates in AMK
has seen each of Kubrick's films more than just a few times. And it is
what is in the films--and not the discussion about them--that is most
important.
So, here goes.
What do you think, for example, of the repeated appearance of the
number 42 in The Shining? The number is not particularly foregrounded
or highlighted, but like Poe's purloined letter it hides in plain
sight. How might this number connect with the other numbers shown and
mentioned in the film? My argument that the number 42 is a typically
oblique reference to the single most lethal year of the Holocaust is
based on the The Shining's more general concern with the history of
human cruelty as well as on Kubrick's habit of using objects in his
scenes and shots to communicate ideas.
If you want more information on this idea, see in particular pp. 229-35
of The Wolf at the Door.
Geoff
Mike Jackson
gco...@albion.edu at gco...@albion.edu on 4/20/06 1:28 PM:busted out this
wacky shit:
> Hi Mike,
>
> I was only concerned that brief mention of my arguments might not be
> convincing enough without the fuller explanation and documentation in
> my book.
>
> But you make a valid point about adapting what I have to say to a
> different medium and it is true that everyone who participates in AMK
> has seen each of Kubrick's films more than just a few times. And it is
> what is in the films--and not the discussion about them--that is most
> important.
So you did read a little Sontag?
> So, here goes.
>
> What do you think, for example, of the repeated appearance of the
> number 42 in The Shining? The number is not particularly foregrounded
> or highlighted, but like Poe's purloined letter it hides in plain
> sight. How might this number connect with the other numbers shown and
> mentioned in the film? My argument that the number 42 is a typically
> oblique reference to the single most lethal year of the Holocaust is
> based on the The Shining's more general concern with the history of
> human cruelty as well as on Kubrick's habit of using objects in his
> scenes and shots to communicate ideas.
Okay, I'll admit it wasn't until I bought the DVD and got a better TV that I
finally noticed the bloody handprint on the woman's fanny in the Gold Room
ghost ball sequence but you've lost me with the numerology. So you can make
me look like an idiot I'll bite, where pray tell is the number 42 in the
film? Do I have to count the number of pips on someone's dress or the number
of steps on the stairs or something?
And as for a holocaust reference might I point out to you that I'd bet far
more of the pop culture references to 42 might as just well point to Douglas
Adams' "H2G2" series than the Holocaust. Just be on the lookout for a hoopy
frood who looks like he really know where his towels is for help on this
one.
> If you want more information on this idea, see in particular pp. 229-35
> of The Wolf at the Door.
>
> Geoff
Again with shilling the book. I'm going to take that as a reflex because you
did seem to start to explain yourself and maybe tailed off because the phone
rang or sumthin...
Your much nicer than section eight case Leonard Wheat who couldn't seem to
help himself for a while there posting ad nauseum on his potted ideas from
his mangled opus, but either you can explain something as simple as the
occurrence of this 42 nonsense or you can't. Can't you cite just ONE to get
the ball rolling? This is as uninteresting so far as the 47's in Trek...
To me I see in Kubrick an artist not that much interested in rehashing
something like the Holocaust as a 'woe are my Jewish people' but rather the
bigger picture of the evils of human nature in general. Just looking at how
he homogenized EWS to such as Cruise and Kidman to me shows this interest in
making his points as generically as possible.
The Holocaust is sadly just the biggest benchmark to date of organized mass
murder but all peoples on the planet are batshit crazy at the moment trying
to turn their governments into theocracies that can claim the local god is
on their side. Every time I turn on the news I think of Buck Turgidson
mouthing off to the lord about feeling the wings of the angel of death...
Kubrick made that point so succinctly and directly like a baseball banged
outta the park at light-speed in "Dr. Strangelove" that I've got to say I
see "The Shining" as a much smaller scope comment on marital violence and
not the Holocaust. Or the genocide of the American Indians for that matter
which has been brought up a few times too.
To me he deftly pared away the excesses of King's novel and boiled it down
to the essentials which despite many King fan's objections it does on
reflection stay very faithful to the book. The thing he really expanded was
to make one wonder if all this ghost stuff was really happening or merely
all in the minds of Jack, Danny and Wendy. Is there life after death, ghosts
or perhaps just wishful thinking? The shining itself could be little more
than psychic powers but even then is Halloran really seeing Danny's cry as
it literally is in the book or is it as Kubrick gives us room to interpret
just a supremely, abet accurately delusional bad feeling he's having? That
Jack seemed batshit crazy from the start annoyed many King fans but then
that's a bigger point about how people ignore warning signs all the time.
How else does a guy like a Turgidson or Ripper become a general or say an
idiot get elected President? If Halloran could shine why does he not see
Jack coming with an axe to give him forty whacks?
To me those sorts of things seem more immediate and more likely the intent
of Kubrick than an incredibly oblique tilt at the Holocaust. Since you have
your name stamped on the spine of a book your opinion may carry more water
but so far it doesn't seem very convincing to me.
--
"Don't play dumb. You're not as good at it as I am."
-- Colonel Flagg, M*A*S*H
natch
gco...@albion.edu wrote:
>>
> What do you think, for example, of the repeated appearance of the
> number 42 in The Shining?
There's something fundamentally wrong with the universe
Boaz
August. Just my opinion, mind you.
Boaz
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Professor Cocks has pointed out in his book
that Kubrick always preferred to tell his stories from the perspective
of the predator. I think that may be what was the toughest struggle for
Kubrick in trying to make a film set during the Holocaust: finding a
story that didn't necessarily focus entirely on the victims. The main
characters in Wartime Lies were not really victims in the proper sense
of the word. They were never captured, nor imprisoned, nor tortured,
nor eventually killed in death camps. Unlike, say, Anne Frank's family
Maciek and his aunt were never captured; they were always on the run,
managing to stay ahead of the Nazis. Still, keep in mind the story was
seen from the perspective of the pursued and not the pursuer.
I think Kubrick really wanted to tell a Holocaust story from the
perspective of the predators, but was faced with the daunting question:
how does one do that without the risk of making them look sympathetic,
or - even worse - glamorizing them? (Recall the firestorm of
controversy associated with ACO, from the time it was first released to
the present; many people thought - and still think - Kubrick was
glorifying Alex.) I do believe Kubrick could have done it better than
anyone else, given his ability to maintain a detached perspective on
his films. However, at the same time, it might have been extremely
painful for Kubrick to write a script like that, even more painful than
Christiane's claim that Kubrick was depressed writing the "Aryan
Papers" script, if only because of the fact that his extended family
had been murdered by the Nazis, and how does one do something like that
without feeling a sense of betrayal to one's own people? (As Kubrick
noted to Michael Herr, "Gentiles don't know how to worry.")
Then there is the issue of making a Holocaust film that not only states
the obvious; it ends up covering the same ground that other films have
covered in the past, and nothing really new on the subject is examined.
Another dilemma is making a film set during the Holocaust that all too
often takes the "easy way out" by manipulating the audience's emotions
but not stimulating the thought process at the same time. That is to
say the audience becomes horrified at the atrocities committed against
the Jews by the Nazis, but more often than not they never see WHY
normal, everyday people could be turned into such monsters and so
willingly kill another group of people in a matter-of-fact, almost
assembly-line and bureaucratic manner. The typical response, in leaving
the theater, is a sense of horror that such a thing could happen, soon
followed by a sense of detached superiority where the audience can
claim to see the horrors as they really are, thus giving them the
"edge" over the perpetrators on the screen. But the Nazis (and
especially the German people) remain the stock villains, and the issue
of the whys and wherefores of the Holocaust remain largely unanswered.
The audience is never left with the thought of "Hey, that could be me,"
in regards to someone merely carrying out "orders from the house." For
example, in "Schindler's List," Spielberg allows the audience to
"identify" with Oskar Schindler, so they aren't put in the "awkward"
position into thinking they might easily be the ones turning on the gas
or popping someone in the head with a Luger. Films like "Schindler's
List," "The Diary of Anne Frank" or "Life is Beautiful," to name three,
provide the kind of endings that offer optimism in the face of
overwhelming tragedy, reminding the audience that "life goes on" after
the dead have been buried and the perpetrators found guilty as charged.
No filmmaker took the stand, as Kubrick did, via Victor Ziegler's
character in EWS, to remind the audience that "Life goes on... until it
doesn't." The former type of ending, which is the more conventional and
saccharine approach, deflects any sense of culpability on the part of
the audience.
"The Shining" allowed Kubrick to tell a story of how people become
predators at the behest of those in a much higher position of authority
without suggesting any culpability on the part of the audience. He
buried it within the recesses of the horror genre, and isn't a horror
story often used as a metaphor to express our deep seeded fears anyway?
By understanding better the approach-avoidance theme Professor Cocks
discusses in his book one can understand better that in using "The
Shining" as an allegory for the Holocaust Kubrick is both approaching
the subject but at the same time still able to avoid it in a direct
sense. Kubrick can tell us the whys and wherefores of such a thing
being possible without the obviousness of the event of the Holocaust
itself ever mentioned or seen. This way the audience brings no
prejudices with them into the theater, nor do they carry them out
afterwards. (Unless they were expecting a "faithful" adaptation of
King's novel and didn't like what they saw, but that is not the point
of either Professor Cocks' book, nor my post here.) The advantage of
the dealing with the Holocaust within the realm of the horror genre is
that the audience is shown the psychological profile of someone who is
systematically broken down and converted to committing such heinous
crimes without feeling they are being given a history lesson, or
suggesting that they too could be a party to such acts. And Professor
Cocks has provided such a detailed, carefully worked out and thought
out argument that in order to successfully challenge I believe it would
require as much work as Professor Cocks had put into his efforts, if
not more. It isn't a case of simply dismissing his thesis with a "Well,
I didn't buy into the Indian thing either," or remarks along those
lines. It's quite a bit more complex than that. Once one gets into the
book and reads it carefully, especially the final four chapters, it is
much harder to regard it as yet one more crackpot theory. And when one
sees the other books Professor Cocks has written on the subject of both
the Third Reich and psychology (or discussing both subjects in one
book) one can see he has brought with him a wealth of knowledge to
support his findings in his book. (I have not yet, unfortunately, read
Professor Cocks' other books. Like this latest one I will probably have
to special order it, or check out the nearest library.)
Another issue worth noting is Jack's killing of Halloran. In the novel
Jack is surrounded by the ghosts of both the killers and their victims,
but he never quite becomes a killer himself. Although he comes close in
going after Wendy and Danny with the roque mallet King has Jack stop
short and turn the thing on himself instead. This would not have
worked, given the context of Kubrick's intentions, based on Professor
Cocks' thesis of TS as an allegory to the Holocaust. In order to show
how far an Everyman like Jack Torrance could be "led... driven, pushed"
into killing another person Kubrick sacrifices Halloran. (Just as
everyday German civilians were to become capable of murdering
"undesirables" in the death camps once they were "led... driven,
pushed" enough by the Nazis.) He is an obvious choice because he is
black and, therefore, an "undesirable" in his own way. Yes, Halloran
was employed at the Overlook as the head cook, but in returning to
rescue Danny and Wendy he no longer "knew his place," and had to be
"corrected," being considered an "outside party" to the likes of Grady
and those in "the house" who give the "orders." Halloran's death also
recalls the death of the black man at the end of "Night of the Living
Dead," who is shot by the police when he emerges from the basement the
following morning, though the purpose of Halloran's death is more
obvious than the ambiguous approach George Romero provided in his film.
Racism is at the root of both.
So the reviewer in [an article Ichorwhip provided in the thread],
states that it is
"fascinating and terrifying" to consider what a Holocaust film by
Kubrick would have been like. According to Professor Cocks, Kubrick did
just that with "The Shining." As Professor Cocks says in the opening
paragraph to Chapter 9 in his book:
"Stanley Kubrick wanted to make a film about the Holocaust. Stanley
Kubrick never made a film about the Holocaust. Until he did. It is not
the film he said he would make. But it is the one he made."
Mike Jackson
jm...@msn.com on 4/20/06 3:37 PM:busted out this wacky shit:
It must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursday's.
How the hell have you been James? Drop me an email sometime!
--
"Asking people about their opinions is a very good way of making friends.
Telling them about your own opinions can work, but not always so well."
-- Douglas Adams, "The Salmon of Doubt"
ichorwhip
How about "Summer of 42"? There's a "ball" for you to TILT on Jackson.
Mike Jackson
at icho...@netzero.net on 4/20/06 9:22 PM:busted out this wacky shit:
Oo-okay. So how does the Loony Tunes clip on TV figure into this pet theory
that insists on jumping on the furniture?
Was Carl Yastrzemski's number 42? I forget. Maybe we can bat that one around
too if it is. IMDB says that Danny croaks "Redrum" 43 times before Wendy
wakes up. Did someone miscount that? I'm not going to go and start counting
but that sounds wrong on the high side. How could that matter anyway? I
think the whole thing is over-analytical. Sometimes you have to let art flow
over you.
I guess I need to watch the movie again...
--
"No animal should ever jump on the dining room furniture unless absolutely
certain he can hold his own in conversation."
-- Fran Lebowitz
Sam Rouse
"ichorwhip" <icho...@netzero.net> wrote:
> Mike Jackson wrote:
> > in article 1145557711.4...@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com,
> > Your much nicer than section eight case Leonard Wheat who couldn't seem to
> > help himself for a while there posting ad nauseum on his potted ideas from
> > his mangled opus, but either you can explain something as simple as the
> > occurrence of this 42 nonsense or you can't. Can't you cite just ONE to get
> > the ball rolling?
>
> How about "Summer of 42"? There's a "ball" for you to TILT on Jackson.
It's a fair question, Mr.
I'mchored-entitled-to-be-a-smartass-when-I-want-to-Whip.
Mr. Cocks, if you want to discuss ideas from your book here, you should expect
to post them. If you want to engage only with those who have already purchased
and read your book, you might be better off exchanging email with Boaz and
Ichorwhip (and possibly Lord Bullingdon, after he's obtained a copy).
My issue with arguments for your thesis as they have been (possibly mis-)
represented here is reliance on details from film (especially The Shining) that
seem arbitrarily selected to support your thesis, even though they appear to be
incidental and, at best, subconsciously placed by the director. My question is
- how does one separate symbols so selected and interpreted by the viewer from
meaning placed by the artist, and have any hope of disentangling the psychology
and motives of the viewer from the psychology (with or without motive) of the
artist? Is theoretical subconscious placement by the artist separable from
interpretation by the viewer, and what weight should it carry when mundane
explanations are available?
--
ichorwhip
"If he catches you you're through!" TILT! I guess that's why GC decided
not to play ball with you although he may still. You're just too
obtuse MJ. Personally I find repetition of certain numbers like 42
interesting, but it's not really GC's best evidence. To me the best
evidence for a Holocaust subtext in The Shining lies in the music.
> Was Carl Yastrzemski's number 42?
8
>I forget. Maybe we can bat that one around
> too if it is.
There's another reason for that bat being shown so prominently if you
ask GC. See? You hit on things with out even knowing it. Good show!
>IMDB says that Danny croaks "Redrum" 43 times before Wendy
> wakes up. Did someone miscount that? I'm not going to go and start counting
> but that sounds wrong on the high side.
That's not one of the occurences of 42 as shown by GC. I think it
sounds high too.
> How could that matter anyway? I
> think the whole thing is over-analytical. Sometimes you have to let art flow
> over you.
I think you're lazy. And I'll bet you couldn't hit a curve-ball with a
tennis racket.
>
> I guess I need to watch the movie again...
What a sport...
> "No animal should ever jump on the dining room furniture unless absolutely
> certain he can hold his own in conversation."
> -- Fran Lebowitz
"I wouldn't know what to do with it if I did."
i
"piop"
ichorwhip
Sam Rouse wrote:
> In article <1145586159.6...@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>,
> "ichorwhip" <icho...@netzero.net> wrote:
>
> > Mike Jackson wrote:
> > > in article 1145557711.4...@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com,
> > > Your much nicer than section eight case Leonard Wheat who couldn't seem to
> > > help himself for a while there posting ad nauseum on his potted ideas from
> > > his mangled opus, but either you can explain something as simple as the
> > > occurrence of this 42 nonsense or you can't. Can't you cite just ONE to get
> > > the ball rolling?
> >
> > How about "Summer of 42"? There's a "ball" for you to TILT on Jackson.
>
> It's a fair question, Mr.
> I'mchored-entitled-to-be-a-smartass-when-I-want-to-Whip.
What the fuck are you talking about SamRouse? He asked for an example,
and I gave him one. I thought it was a fair question myself, but I also
anticipated MJ's obtuse response. Quit picking on me! If GC doesn't
respond tomorrow I'll put another free clue out there.
Sam Rouse
"ichorwhip" <icho...@netzero.net> wrote:
> Sam Rouse wrote:
> > In article <1145586159.6...@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>,
> > "ichorwhip" <icho...@netzero.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Mike Jackson wrote:
> > > > in article 1145557711.4...@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com,
> > > > Your much nicer than section eight case Leonard Wheat who couldn't seem
> > > > to
> > > > help himself for a while there posting ad nauseum on his potted ideas
> > > > from
> > > > his mangled opus, but either you can explain something as simple as the
> > > > occurrence of this 42 nonsense or you can't. Can't you cite just ONE to
> > > > get
> > > > the ball rolling?
> > >
> > > How about "Summer of 42"? There's a "ball" for you to TILT on Jackson.
> >
> > It's a fair question, Mr.
> > I'mchored-entitled-to-be-a-smartass-when-I-want-to-Whip.
>
> What the fuck are you talking about SamRouse? He asked for an example,
> and I gave him one. I thought it was a fair question myself, but I also
> anticipated MJ's obtuse response. Quit picking on me! If GC doesn't
> respond tomorrow I'll put another free clue out there.
How can someone as acerbic as you feel picked on?
--
JW Moore
You bastard.
I took the bait and read the excerpts of this book from the Kubrick
Site. Ten minutes of my life that I'll never get back. Aside from the
interesting background of the Harlans, it reads like a hastily
assembled Master's thesis ... without the thesis. Reminiscent of the
urban legends about dirty words in ice cubes, or alien abductions, or
playing "Stairway to Heaven" backwards ... Compared to Blakemore's
cogent and readable piece on Native American subtexts in The Shining,
this overwrought Shining/Holocaust argument is tenuous at best,
supported by a deluge of factoids that fall far short of compelling
evidence. Some are just plain wrong (Yaz was not the only Polish 70s
baseball star). He'd have been better off inserting some stock-thriller
plotpoints and calling it "The Kubrick Code".
If Kubrick really was as obsessed with the Holocaust as the author
claims, methinks he'd have done "Aryan Papers" years ago. Or he'd have
stayed true to Schnitzler with EWS and kept Bill and Alice as
fin-de-siecle Viennese Jews.
Oh yes, Jackie Robinson's number was 42 ....
~~Jack
Mike Jackson
at icho...@netzero.net on 4/21/06 12:11 AM:busted out this wacky shit:
>
> Mike Jackson wrote:
>> in article 1145586159.6...@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com, ichorwhip
>> at icho...@netzero.net on 4/20/06 9:22 PM:busted out this wacky shit:
<much snippage and snipeage>
>>>> Your much nicer than section eight case Leonard Wheat who couldn't seem to
>>>> help himself for a while there posting ad nauseum on his potted ideas from
>>>> his mangled opus, but either you can explain something as simple as the
>>>> occurrence of this 42 nonsense or you can't. Can't you cite just ONE to get
>>>> the ball rolling?
>>>>
>>> How about "Summer of 42"? There's a "ball" for you to TILT on Jackson.
>>
>> Oo-okay. So how does the Loony Tunes clip on TV figure into this pet theory
>> that insists on jumping on the furniture?
>
> "If he catches you you're through!" TILT! I guess that's why GC decided
> not to play ball with you although he may still. You're just too
> obtuse MJ. Personally I find repetition of certain numbers like 42
> interesting, but it's not really GC's best evidence. To me the best
> evidence for a Holocaust subtext in The Shining lies in the music.
So why was Kubrick hiding all these Easter eggs? Are you implying he was the
Easter Bunny of hidden Holocaust reference? What would be the point?
>> Was Carl Yastrzemski's number 42?
>
> 8
>> I forget. Maybe we can bat that one around
>> too if it is.
>
> There's another reason for that bat being shown so prominently if you
> ask GC. See? You hit on things with out even knowing it. Good show!
I guess a few more minutes to think things over aren't going to fucking help
me at this point.
>> IMDB says that Danny croaks "Redrum" 43 times before Wendy
>> wakes up. Did someone miscount that? I'm not going to go and start counting
>> but that sounds wrong on the high side.
>
> That's not one of the occurences of 42 as shown by GC. I think it
> sounds high too.
See, something IS fundamentally wrong with the Universe.
>> How could that matter anyway? I
>> think the whole thing is over-analytical. Sometimes you have to let art flow
>> over you.
>
> I think you're lazy. And I'll bet you couldn't hit a curve-ball with a
> tennis racket.
Dear fellow, the civilized game is roquet.
>> I guess I need to watch the movie again...
>
> What a sport...
Well it beats repeating that dose of the mumps.
>> "No animal should ever jump on the dining room furniture unless absolutely
>> certain he can hold his own in conversation."
>> -- Fran Lebowitz
>
> "I wouldn't know what to do with it if I did."
> i
> "piop"
All the best people...
--
"No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up."
-- Jane Wagner
Mike Jackson
on 4/21/06 1:15 AM:busted out this wacky shit:
Orange you going to be sorry you asked to morrow.
--
'Never face facts; if you do you'll never get up in the morning."
-- Marlo Thomas
Matthew Dickinson
out...
Matthew Dickinson
(Notice by the way the date of that article, it's in the URL... !!!)
Matthew Dickinson
WAIT Adolf Hitler was born on 4/20!!! Holy shit... when was KUBRICK BORN???
or better yet... when was GEOFFREY COCKS BORN??
fess up
Matthew Dickinson
Bill Reid
Matthew Dickinson <stal...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:moGdnd5nAYjwSdXZ...@comcast.com...
> And what about number 420??
WHAT ABOUT IT??!!!??!!??
> Is it in Kubrick's movies a lot?
NO, THE NUMBER 42 IS REPEATED 10 TIMES IN "THE
SHINING", EQUALING--YOU GOT IT--FOUR TWENTY!!!
How does that coincide with your post-Holocaust Jewish
filmmaker conspiracy, eh Mandrake?
> check this
> out...
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/20/420_conspiracy/
Forget that, here's the real poop from http://www.howardstern.com
(yesterday's show):
THE HISTORY OF 420
Stoner Dude got on the line and announced today's date, April 20, is a
special day among his people. Stoner Dude reported high school kids in
the early 1970s started getting together after school at 4:20 p.m. to smoke
pot, creating the term "420" to signify getting high, so 4/20 has since
become
the national holiday for pot smokers. After Gary explained that Stoner Dude'
s
theory wasn't exactly correct -the actual story behind the importance of 420
is that it's the police code for a marijuana bust - Howard commented today
was also Ralph's birthday. Stoner Dude then brought up today was Carmen
Electra and George Takei's birthday as well, while Artie noted Hitler was
born today too.
---end of excerpt
HITLER WAS BORN ON FOUR TWENTY MANDRAKE!!!!
And anybody who's seen "2001" knows Kubrick must have been
a major toker...
---
William Ernest "Innumerologist" Reid
Matthew Dickinson
Nu uh he said in the Playboy that he didn't do drugs.
Your Pal Brian
Did you know Kubrick planned to call the Dawn of Man sequence Rainy Day Monkeys
#12 & 35? 12 x 35=420. True fact!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/420_(cannabis_culture)
Say, I wonder who was born on 1/14? Nietzsche perhaps?
Born on This Day
- Benedict Arnold, military leader (1741)
- Matthew Fontaine Maury, oceanographer (1806)
- Albert Schweitzer, humanitarian and musician (1875)
- Hal Roach, film producer (1892)
- Julian Bond, civil rights activist and politician (1940)
- Faye Dunaway, actor (1941)
Nope, no Nietzsche. But when Kubrick died he was working on a film called The
Life Aquatic With Matthew Fontaine Maury. In accord with his final wishes, the
film was completed upon his death by Wes Anderson. True fact!
Enough inanity.
In history, the Treaty of Paris ends the American Revolution, Arthur Miller
marries Marilyn Monroe, and Dante kicks the bucket. Significance? None.
Brian
Matthew Dickinson
Yeah, but Schweitzer, that's a Jewish name, isn't it? Either that or
it's German. I don't know what's worse.
gco...@albion.edu
Please don't fell that I want you to have to buy my book. I am just as
happy if you get it from a library. Really. Nobody becomes a college
professor to make a lot of money. Or at least I didn't. And haven't
(made a lot of money).
I see another poster has mentioned "Summer of '42"--I don't want to
preempt others, so I will mention just one other instance of "42" at
this juncture: check out Danny's Bugs Bunny jersey in the Boulder
bathroom scene (DVD scene 4 "Bloody vision ([Awakening of Jacob])"
early in the film. The juxtaposition with the first appearance of the
hemorrhaging elevator is quite striking, imo. This is Kubrick's
"poetic realism" at its best. That there is an historical subtext to
The Shining is very, very likely, since we know from a number of
sources--including many of his films both made and unmade--that Kubrick
was extremely interested in modern history in particular. (Anthony
Frewin has recently [in The Stanley Kubrick Archives] said that 80
percent of what Kubrick read was non-fiction). So I think there are
levels of discourse in The Shining, including the subject of the
individual family (as also in A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, and
Eyes Wide Shut) you rightly mention. I don't see these subjects as
mutually exclusive, but rather as mutually supportive and I think there
is a large amount of evidence for multiple levels of discourse and
meaning in all of Kubrick's films. That's one of the things that makes
his work so fascinating--and why so many people like those on AMK are
interested in discussing his films.
It is interesting that it was in the 1970s that Douglas Adams, inspired
by Monty Python's observation that "42" is a just plain funny number,
famously wrote that 42 is the answer to the question of existence.
It's probably just a coincidence, but the juxtaposition of "42" as
"funny" and "1942" as (and not just in Kubrick films) a not uncommon
referent to the Holocaust might say something about the culture of the
1970s in which interest in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust spiked
radically higher.
Thanks for your thoughts,
Geoff
gco...@albion.edu
You're right, so I will contribute what I can to this thread.
You raise a good point about the danger of reading oneself into one's
subject. This is always a danger in History in particular, because
History is about human beings, period. I've been trained as a
historian to keep an eye on this and I try to do so. But it is also
the case in History (and in psychoanalysis, in which I also have some
academic training) that human beings intuitively understand other human
beings on the basis of the shared experience of being human. And it
also the case that if one has a shared interest or world view or
whatever with one's subject, then it is possible that such a shared
interest might give the investigator additional insight into the
subject. I don't compare myself with Kubrick's achievements or
abilities (he was a genius, I am not), but I do think, as a result of
my long study of the history of Germany and Europe in the twentieth
century in particular, that I am in a position to notice things about
Kubrick's concerns and art that might not be as apparent initially to
other people.
So I hope that the careful study I have made of Kubrick's life and
work, based on the careful study of a lot of other people, might have
some value. I don't think I have been selective in the choosing of
evidence, that is, in the negative of focusing on only a few, scattered
bits. I think I have found patterns of expression and reference in
Kubrick's films that parallel his stated historical concerns and
experiences in his life from the 1930s through the 1990s. I also don't
believe that Kubrick's meditation on the Holocaust is the only, or even
necessarily the most important, thing about his work. There are lots
of other meanings to be found in his films. I just think I've detected
another one that fits in interesting ways with the ones others have
found (and will find).
Geoff
Mike Jackson
gco...@albion.edu at gco...@albion.edu on 4/21/06 10:37 AM:busted out this
wacky shit:
> Hi Mike,
>
> Please don't fell that I want you to have to buy my book. I am just as
> happy if you get it from a library. Really. Nobody becomes a college
> professor to make a lot of money. Or at least I didn't. And haven't
> (made a lot of money).
On reflection it's probably not even in the Mississippi library system, but
then not much of worth is.
> I see another poster has mentioned "Summer of '42"--I don't want to
> preempt others, so I will mention just one other instance of "42" at
> this juncture: check out Danny's Bugs Bunny jersey in the Boulder
> bathroom scene (DVD scene 4 "Bloody vision ([Awakening of Jacob])"
> early in the film. The juxtaposition with the first appearance of the
> hemorrhaging elevator is quite striking, imo. This is Kubrick's
> "poetic realism" at its best. That there is an historical subtext to
> The Shining is very, very likely, since we know from a number of
> sources--including many of his films both made and unmade--that Kubrick
> was extremely interested in modern history in particular.
I haven't got time to plunder the film this morning, but I will fire off
back to you that the premise of your thesis to me sees that Kubrick was
being cute by burying all these Holocaust references in what seems to be a
film where to me he was having fun making a straight thriller. All this 42
nonsense could be merely coincidental and doesn't seem to me the sort of
thing Kubrick would do.
But then again there's such a dirth of new things to talk about Kubrick
related that I'm sure you'll make some mileage if not money off the idea.
> (Anthony Frewin has recently [in The Stanley Kubrick Archives] said that 80
> percent of what Kubrick read was non-fiction). So I think there are levels of
> discourse in The Shining, including the subject of the individual family (as
> also in A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, and Eyes Wide Shut) you rightly
> mention. I don't see these subjects as mutually exclusive, but rather as
> mutually supportive and I think there is a large amount of evidence for
> multiple levels of discourse and meaning in all of Kubrick's films. That's
> one of the things that makes his work so fascinating--and why so many people
> like those on AMK are interested in discussing his films.
I think you are grasping at straws. Look, when Kubrick made a point it was
to the point. I dare say that "Dr. Strangelove" had a part in having saving
the human race by creating a shit storm of media frenzy in its time pointing
out the absurdity of the arms race. Had he had enough lifetime I think he
might have also worked out the definitive film on the Holocaust. I wonder
that little Steven didn't poach off him unfairly in the time he was working
on "Wartime Lies".
I just don't buy that Kubrick was seeding these references like bon mots
through "The Shining". Your intentions seem to be good, but I think you're
sifting too hard for hidden clues to a conclusion you want to find. And you
don't have to look that hard to find things that seem to mean something in
films so dense to begin with. But sometimes things like the continuity
errors in SK's film might be just that, an error that he didn't anticipate
at the time people would be freeze framing 25 years later on DVDs to ponder
if they had any 'significance'. I think there's a certain amount of this
that's refrigerator logic.
It's disheartening that SK has such a bad media rap because to me each film
is shaking the shit out of the viewer to say look at what you're doing to
each other and yourselves and stop that. It's much more elementary (or
should I say elemental?) and straightforward than people give him credit
for.
> It is interesting that it was in the 1970s that Douglas Adams, inspired
> by Monty Python's observation that "42" is a just plain funny number,
> famously wrote that 42 is the answer to the question of existence.
More than that I think it was DNA's way to point out the absurdity of the
constant search for meaning and answers. If you remember Deep Thought and
the comical philosophers demanding immutable areas of doubt and uncertainty
so they could keep their jobs was pretty funny.
> It's probably just a coincidence, but the juxtaposition of "42" as
> "funny" and "1942" as (and not just in Kubrick films) a not uncommon
> referent to the Holocaust might say something about the culture of the
> 1970s in which interest in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust spiked
> radically higher.
>
> Thanks for your thoughts,
>
> Geoff
Again, I think you are looking to hard. Kubrick was much more than dwelling
on the Holocaust the way you seem to be suggesting. The Holocaust as
horrible as it was is merely the manifestation of a much larger wrong. That
human nature needs a mirror held up to it's foibles so it can see how absurd
and deadly those foibles can become. I don't know if Kubrick donned a yamaka
or had a Seder or anything else Jewish because of his ethnic heritage but I
suspect if he did it was to appease the feelings of relatives if ever. He
didn't seem to be interest in all that. I think he saw us more clearly as
once species irregardless of these artificial ethnic borders we've created
and fairy story religious mumbo-jumbo. I think if he was going to do the
Holocaust in any way it would have been head on and you'd have known it.
"2001" boiled that message down quite nicely and the threads of it are all
throughout his films. Even though many of them seem like plain downers at
times there is the promise of triumph and transformation for the better in
all of them.
Take "Full Metal Jacket". Joker is probably the closet thing to a hero ever
in his films, or rather perhaps how a hero is made because Joker can save
anyone yet in his life. He can't save Pyle because he's not smart enough at
that point in his life, he can't save Cowboy or the sniper but he has
compassion to understand the sniper's motivations and pain. And even though
she just killed his best friend cowboy he is man enough to show compassion
and end her suffering and we leave him badly scarred but hopeful and alive.
In a way he's a younger manifestation of Colonel Dax in "Paths of Glory" who
also wasn't able to save those he set out to, but he tried much the same. We
are left with hope that these guys taking a stand was transformational to
others around them and tweaked the world for the better.
Those are the kinds of things his films impart. I don't think he wanted us
on some Easter egg hunt for the occurrences of the number 42. I can't reach
behind the sign and drag him out like Marshall McLuhan but there does seem
to be a fallacy in your fallacy. At least we aren't in line for "The Sorrow
and The Pity" either.
Now excuse me but it's time I got out of this bathrobe as it's almost noon
and saving the world in one's jimjams is too Arthur Dent for me...
--
"Obviously I was either onto something, or on something."
-- Larry Wall on the creation of Perl
gco...@albion.edu
bringing the Holocaust to the screen. I spoke with Christiane Kubrick
and she said that Kubrick was depressed the whole time he worked on
Aryan Papers. It was just too painful for him personally, aside from
the fact that he shared the doubts of many about how one could
responsibly treat such atrocity in a work of art. So I think that the
"cute" ways he found to allude to the Holocaust were not only--or maybe
not even primarily--the result of conscious calculation but of
subconscious approach-avoidance. He was definitely and justly famous
for using depth of field in film to allow the inclusion of all sorts of
objects that carry meaning--for example, the painting "Horse and Train"
by Alex Colville on the wall of the Torrance apartment in Boulder in
scene 6 (Family history) of The Shining. Lots of interesting
connections through that painting, by the same artist who painted
"Woman and Terrier," which appears above the TV set in the Boulder
apartment as Wendy talks on the phone with Jack about his getting the
job at the Overlook. There's no doubt that Kubrick always took the time
and trouble to place little "Easter eggs" in his film. And then there
is Paul Peel's "After the Bath" (1890) of two naked children standing
in front of a large fireplace, a painting that is on the wall of the
Torrance apartment at the Overlook and also takes on dark meaning in
Atom Egoyan's film Ararat about the Armenian genocide. What any of
these details mean and whether they work well is a matter of opinion,
of course.
Geoff
Wordsmith
It signifies much...to any with too much time on their hands.
W : )
porti...@yahoo.com
ichorwhip wrote:
> porti...@yahoo.com wrote:
> <snip>
>> When you suddenly spring on the scene with a post that pretty much
> amounts to a chiding, it looks like you're trying to set rules and
> conditions. In other words, "ownership..." It was aggravating, and I
> responded with as much grace as I could muster. I do beg your
> forgiveness if I personally offended you, but when you offend others
> knowingly or otherwise, things will negatively escalate until an
> agreement or a detente can be reached. Now that we have sort of
> settled things a bit, I'm hoping that we can get back to something
> really interesting and worthwhile to the Kubrick group. What do you
> say?
>
> "New way? What's this about a new way?"
> i
> "piop"
I say yes, let's make up & get on with it.
Genevieve
Yelps
<porti...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1145658983.0...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
"You know, I always say that a day without an autopsy is like a day without
sunshine."
-Buffy
>
> Genevieve
>
ichorwhip
JW Moore wrote:
> Your Anchorship,
>
> You bastard.
At you service Jackass...
>
> I took the bait and read the excerpts of this book from the Kubrick
> Site. Ten minutes of my life that I'll never get back.
Maybe you can get a refund. Oh, sorry, was that too smart ass?
Seriously, the excerpts don't do the book justice. I've expressed this
before.
> Aside from the
> interesting background of the Harlans,
Well that was worth at least two minutes then... you're only down 8.
> it reads like a hastily
> assembled Master's thesis ... without the thesis. Reminiscent of the
> urban legends about dirty words in ice cubes, or alien abductions, or
> playing "Stairway to Heaven" backwards ...
I think his style is average; perhaps a little academically dense, but
certainly readable. The "hastily assembled" critique may be valid as
far as what was selected to go online. I'd like to see GC put the
whole book online if someone would host it. He said that he wasn't
trying to get rich, and clearly this is a book written for a certain
crowd. It's very frustrating having read it, and not being able to
adequately express in a paragraph how academically valid it is.
>Compared to Blakemore's
> cogent and readable piece on Native American subtexts in The Shining,
> this overwrought Shining/Holocaust argument is tenuous at best,
> supported by a deluge of factoids that fall far short of compelling
> evidence.
So you won't read it all given a chance? I'm certain myself that there
is a thesis built up and proven in this book, and that you'll have a
hell of a time trying to refute every bit of the evidence, but basing
your final assessment on a few chapters is "tenuous at best."
> Some are just plain wrong (Yaz was not the only Polish 70s
> baseball star).
Far and away the most popular and noted... (I saw him play. What a
class act!) Why would Kubrick go to all the trouble of making his
signature on the bat very legible in more than one shot? Just a
coincidence?
> He'd have been better off inserting some stock-thriller
> plotpoints and calling it "The Kubrick Code".
You're sounding like a slightly less hayseedy MJ now...
>
> If Kubrick really was as obsessed with the Holocaust as the author
> claims, methinks he'd have done "Aryan Papers" years ago. Or he'd have
> stayed true to Schnitzler with EWS and kept Bill and Alice as
> fin-de-siecle Viennese Jews.
Well approach-avoidance is the key as GC explained a bit in another
response in this thread. Personally I think Kubrick was relieved to
shelve "Aryan Papers" from what I've read on the subject. I think
you're shooting too much from the hip with this Jack ol fella. It is
worth looking into more...
>
> Oh yes, Jackie Robinson's number was 42
Another class act... my favorite was half of that, a guy named Roberto
Clemente...
"Impossible... I don't believe it."
i
"piop"
Mike Jackson
gco...@albion.edu at gco...@albion.edu on 4/21/06 1:00 PM:busted out this
wacky shit:
> Another part of my argument is that Kubrick struggled with the idea of
> bringing the Holocaust to the screen. I spoke with Christiane Kubrick
> and she said that Kubrick was depressed the whole time he worked on
> Aryan Papers. It was just too painful for him personally, aside from
> the fact that he shared the doubts of many about how one could
> responsibly treat such atrocity in a work of art.
Yes, she said this in various places and I think it only probably scratches
the surface of why he never made such a film. The horror if is just too
immense. To say he was depressed is the obvious oversimplification. Any
normal person would be depressed doing the research. Finding a worthy story
to frame it in and all was something he seems to have decided was just too
much.
You'd have to make years worth of mini-series just to encompass it all.
Things like "The Sorrow and The Pity" or "Shoah" probably give a general
sense of the enormity of it that would be hard to surpass in fiction. The
only way to do it is in small slices of personal stories. And then those are
hard to take even with something like "The Pianist" from a few years ago.
Then you have a happy idiot like little Steven and his fun film he just
plowed ahead and did showing the same naiveté he brings to other pointless
drivel like "Minority Report", "A.I." or "War of the Worlds". If only some
alien would land with a large sock full of manure and tell him to make
funnier films...
> So I think that the "cute" ways he found to allude to the Holocaust were not
> only--or maybe not even primarily--the result of conscious calculation but of
> subconscious approach-avoidance.
A Freudian slip in the prop department?
> He was definitely and justly famous for using depth of field in film to allow
> the inclusion of all sorts of objects that carry meaning--for example, the
> painting "Horse and Train" by Alex Colville on the wall of the Torrance
> apartment in Boulder in scene 6 (Family history) of The Shining. Lots of
> interesting connections through that painting, by the same artist who painted
> "Woman and Terrier," which appears above the TV set in the Boulder apartment
> as Wendy talks on the phone with Jack about his getting the job at the
> Overlook. There's no doubt that Kubrick always took the time and trouble to
> place little "Easter eggs" in his film. And then there is Paul Peel's "After
> the Bath" (1890) of two naked children standing in front of a large fireplace,
> a painting that is on the wall of the Torrance apartment at the Overlook and
> also takes on dark meaning in Atom Egoyan's film Ararat about the Armenian
> genocide. What any of these details mean and whether they work well is a
> matter of opinion, of course.
>
> Geoff
Here's the thing. If you're right - so what? These are little things that
were in his field of vision. At what point does this start looking like
Cliff Clavin at the end of the bar pontificating with Norm and Sam about
"little known facts"? In an era before Google with nothing more than card
indexes at the library how many people could have looked up these
antecedents you are going on about much less recognized them for what you
think they were in the first place?
He also for instance put his wife's paintings in his films because I'm sure
he was immensely proud of her and his daughter's art. What does that 'mean'
to the film? Just that. They were beautiful things.
Flush out your headgear and look at the insane Strangelovian world around us
right now. I'd be happier to start a discussion and discourse with the
greater public about the big ticket ideas that are so fundamental and so
forgotten largely these days by the great unwashed 'fundamentalists' out
there taking all the fun out of the word and world.
I don't think Kubrick wanted you going over the sprockets looking for clues
when he built you a film.
Find an entertaining way to talk about those big things instead of the
minutiae of the hidden meaning of some Masonic tie-tac and I'll really
admire you.
--
"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad.
People are either charming or tedious."
-- Oscar Wilde
Bill Reid
Yelps <birdsn...@worldya.net> wrote in message
news:itCdncWaLvt...@adelphia.com...
> <porti...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:1145658983.0...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> > ichorwhip wrote:
> >> Now that we have sort of
> >> settled things a bit, I'm hoping that we can get back to something
> >> really interesting and worthwhile to the Kubrick group. What do you
> >> say?
> >
> > I say yes, let's make up & get on with it.
>
> "You know, I always say that a day without an autopsy is like a day
without
> sunshine."
> -Buffy
>
"I think I speak for the entire group when I say HUH?!?!??" - Buffy
"Thanks, I feel much more Dada-esque now" - Buffy
"You didn't have a single date in high school, did you?" - Buffy
---
William Ernest Reid
ichorwhip
gco...@albion.edu wrote:
> Hi Mike,
>
> Please don't fell that I want you to have to buy my book. I am just as
> happy if you get it from a library. Really. Nobody becomes a college
> professor to make a lot of money. Or at least I didn't. And haven't
> (made a lot of money).
>
> I see another poster has mentioned "Summer of '42"--I don't want to
> preempt others,
By all means, you could have. It's mainly your observations being
discussed at this point; I was just getting "the ball rolling"
etcetera... I guess I'll go ahead then and add that "Summer of 42" is
also a significant, referentially-charged choice in that it serves as a
juxtaposition to the January 1942 Wannsee conference (the official
place of origin of the Final Solution). "Kubrick juxtaposes winter and
summer as doubles of the evil that inhabits humankind year round." (I
think, despite the Holocaust references, that TS is mostly about the
pervasiveness of evil in mankind, and it's inextricability.) It's also
the story of a high schooler who can't wait to get out and become a
paratrooper just like his brother in World War 2. You say
"paratrooper," and I automatically think of those Germans jumping one
by one out of a plane timed perfectly to the syncopations of the
interlude in the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth in ACO. Although
quite a grim sight, Kubrick invests it with an almost comic depiction;
juxtaposition was one of his favorite tools. "Summer of 42" then
serves more than one purpose for Kubrick in TS. It's also a very
subtle, natural and skillfully-crafted film well worth watching.
Robert Mulligan's direction is certainly something that Kubrick would
have appreciated. It's understated and yet full of many deft visual
and emotional touches.
{2x3x7=42}
"Go check it out!"
i
"piop"
MickeyMoop
> >
> > Enough inanity.
>
>
> It signifies much...to any with too much time on their hands.
>
> W : )
kelpzoidzl
MickeyMoop
>
>
>
> All the drama.
"Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end, we'd sing and dance {and gouge out our fella droogs' entrails} forever and a day..."
Don Stockbauer
> i want her back her so bad, donald. With her kid sister Portiiieee bloody bet she IS a redhead Austrio-Slav. "O there's no place like HOME for the holidays..." > > > > Enough inanity. > > > > > It signifies much...to any with too much time on their hands. > > W : ) along those "lines" the "we'reeee marrrieeed" carbon-unit is now twitting herself, following and receiving followers all quite madly made-up #lf0eruwejfjv or #peipskvsigfpihblarp or #i2r084rjknvehsmurfling "The Way We Were" s o b they didn't carry on like this for Titian or Nellie Melba or Saul of Taurus..
MickeyMoop
>
>
> Leggo of the past, MM.
Don Stockbauer
MickeyMoop
> It is my understanding that refrigerators have very poor aerodynamics and would make most unsuitable aeroplanes.
Don Stockbauer
MickeyMoop
> On Saturday, December 22, 2012 9:24:39 AM UTC-6, MickeyMoop wrote:
>
Don Stockbauer
MickeyMoop
> have you taken your temperature?
myriadsmallcreature
nether regions.
Poor Cerberus.
You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave... you
can never leave... you can never leave...
You'll always be the caretaker.
kelpzoidzl
MickeyMoop
kelpzoidzl
Don Stockbauer
MickeyMoop
> On Monday, December 31, 2012 9:40:45 AM UTC-6, MickeyMoop wrote:
>
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
>
>
> Stealest thou nicht lyrics from Paul McCartney, THE VOICE OF BOG. 'Wounded warriors took her soul away." - JENNY WREN, soon to be a major and minor in motion picture.
MickeyMoop
> On Wednesday, January 2, 2013 9:43:40 AM UTC-5, Don :
>
> > On Monday, December 31, 2012 9:40:45 AM UTC-6, MickeyMoop caressed by moonlight my precious edited by Jerome Agel "The Making of Kubrick's 2001 1970 edition :
>
> >
>
> > > On Saturday, December 29, 2012 12:30:02 PM UTC-5, Don Stockbauer gets some promotion
"munch munch munch what's up, docs?" Where's Stackhouse? "Margaret Stackhouse's speculations on the film are perhaps the most intelligent that I've read anywhere, and I am, of course, including all the reviews and the articles that have appeared on the film and the many hundreds of lettersthat I have received. What a first-rate intelligence!" - Kubrick, as quoted by Jerome Agel, Signet Books, $1.95
Don Stockbauer
And then came Jones and Don Stockbauer both claiming that intelligent XT's communicate, not travel, thus invalidating "2001:ASO", to the dismay of a one Bill "Idiot" Reid of Fort Dix, NJ. Anyway, where is this Ms. Stackhouse now? Has she gone on to make great strides perfecting Global Brain theory, perhaps proving that the format of the worldwide communication system mimicks that of a neural network, thus sealing the proof of the GB finally? I think not. Then I disappeared and wound up in purgatory next to Descartes and MickeyMoopsky.
MickeyMoop
>
> >
>
> > > > > On Saturday, December 29, 2012 12:30:02 PM UTC-5, Don Stockbauer gets some promotion
>
>
>
>
>
> I've got my own purgatory, Senator! "This committee owes my client the Filbert an apology, an apology, Senator!"
MickeyMoop
"Just then, Victor Lyndon, Kubrick's associate producer (he was also the associate producer of 'Dr. Strangelove' and, most recently, of 'Darling'), came in. A trim, athletic-looking man of forty-six, he leans toward the latest 'mod' styling in clothes, and he was wearing an elegant green buttonless, self-shutting shirt." Jdremy BERNSTEIN, Profile: Stanley Kubrick copyright 1966 by JEREMY BERNSTEIN from Jerome Agel's THE MAKING OF KUBRICK'S 2001, page 64 another SKangel who got his literary wings permission granted to Agel a long time ago in a bubblebath far away and Lyndon observed in THE NEW YORKER and "A Comprehensible World" from BERNSTEIN published by Random House, Inc. And what about Richard Lester, hey? Any memes, jokes, p-o-v passed between SK, Lester, Fellini, John Winston Ono Lennon? Purity of puerility. bvd still bvding about "GOG" in thread 28,909.
MickeyMoop
> On Sunday, April 16, 2006 1:19:29 PM UTC-4, Mickey the Moop found the true Gen very very sure of Herself.. the darling triumph of evolutiona.
>
>
>
> Victor Lyndon, and, most recently, of 'Darling' fab, gear J e r e m y BERNSTEIN, Profile: Stanley Kubrick copyright 1966 it's A l i s o n, not Allison, it's Douglas Trumbull and Con Pederson, it's "The Cross is in the Ballpark."
MickeyMoop
Cardinal Dolan at 20 to 1.
kelpzoidzl
> "It seems my grandparents had been, at the very least, scary. My grandfather had gotten along with no one in his family except my father. Even the animals would run away from him. When he wanted the horse, he would have to hide in the house while one of his sons fetched the animal, because if the horse saw my grandfather, the horse would be gone." - John Patrick Shanley, NY Times, 8 March 2013
>
> Cardinal Dolan at 20 to 1.
"Let’s digress just to let people in on Freemasonry’s involvement with
acting and motion pictures. The famous 233 Club was a Masonic chapter
for actors who were Freemasons. Examples of actors who were Freemasons
include John Aasen, Gene Autry, Monte Blue and Humphrey Bogart,
Douglas McClean, John Wayne.
Then there is T.V. DJ Dick Clark. Examples of Motion picture
executives who were Freemasons incl. Ellis G. Arnall (Pres. of the
Soc. of Ind. Motion Picture Producers), Will H. Hays (Czar of motion
pictures 1922-45, and Pres. Motion Picture Produces & Distributors of
Amer. Inc.), Benj. B. Kahane (v.p. & dir. Assoc. of Motion Picture
Producers, Inc.), Carl Laemmle (Pres. Univ. Pictures Corp til ’36),
Frank E. Mullen ( man. dept of info. RCA, VP NBC ‘39-’46, exec. VP NBC
‘46-’48), David Sarnoff (Chrm. of Bd. Radio Corp. of Amer. & ,,father"
of American television), Jack M. Warner (v.p. of Warner Bros.) and the
President & dir. of Universal Pictures since 1952. The Freemasons have
made much of Walt Disney’s membership in their membership sales
pitches. Because the 2 Disney brothers’ chief contributions to the
production of Disney films were the finances and occasionally the
ideas used in a film, it is rather misrepresentative of things that
Walt Disney got all the credit for the success and quality of the
Disney cartoons. Chapter 5. Deeper Insights into the Illuminati
Formula by Fritz Springmeier & Cisco Wheeler
You remember Aleister Crowley. He was a 33rd degree Mason. I talked to
Bill Schnoebelen one time and asked him, “Where did the Masons get the
sodomy?” and he said, “It came by Aleister Crowley from black magic
Hinduism.” Well, that isn’t the only place it came from. Deprogrammer
Interview with Marion Knox: In the House of the Strongman, Sodomy is
the Key - by Elana Freeland"
kelpzoidzl
Yes Beverly Hills-Hollywood the paperclip Texas collaborators. Help
moving the people to camps and taking their property and then coming
to the land of the brave to build banks and drugstores.
kelpzoidzl
necroing the thread
kelpzoidzl
Gene Autry?
There was another singin cowboy.
he got off scott free. for what he did to my sisters. Then I found
this. the other singin cowboy's wife handled the foundation in honor
of the man who wooed the kids with Hope you'll ride my sleigh
tonight.
Someone in a Black Dahlia discussion wrote:
Hi Magpie.
Here's an LA Times article about Knowlton. I didn't know that she had
passed away, apparently from an overdose:
http://articles.latimes.com/2004/dec.../me-knowlton19
Best regards,
Archaic
She pestered me something miserable for about 6 months before I
finally blocked her email. She was also banned from just about every
forum dealing with the Black Dahlia (bethshort.org has an archive of
the exchanges that got her banned from there) She was also banned from
the Gene Autrey fan site (she believed that Autry was part of the
pedophile ring that short worked for).
A tragic case, and yes, she committed suicide by overdose about a
year later.
__________________
Here is that newstory:
Janice Knowlton, 67; Believed That Her Father Killed the Black Dahlia
Obituaries
December 19, 2004|Dennis McLellan | Times Staff Writer
For more than a decade, Janice Knowlton believed she knew the answer
to a question that has long intrigued crime buffs: Who killed the
Black Dahlia?
Knowlton was 10 years old and living in Westminster when the nude body
of Hollywood hopeful Elizabeth Short -- bisected at the waist and
drained of blood -- was found Jan. 15, 1947, in a vacant lot in the
Leimert Park district of southwest Los Angeles.
More than 40 years later, Knowlton inserted herself into one of the
city's most sensational and gruesome unsolved murder mysteries. She
said horrifying, long-repressed memories had convinced her that George
Knowlton -- her long-dead father -- had murdered Short.
A onetime professional singer and public relations firm owner who
lived in Anaheim Hills, Knowlton said she witnessed her rage-filled
father beat Short to death with a claw hammer in the detached garage
of the family home in Westminster.
Knowlton said that her father had been having an affair with Short and
that Short was staying in a makeshift bedroom in their garage, where
she suffered a miscarriage. Knowlton said she was later forced to
accompany her father when he disposed of the body.
In 1991, she persuaded skeptical Westminster police detectives to
search for evidence of the Black Dahlia murder -- and that of another
murder she believed her father committed -- by excavating a vacant
lot, the site of her former home. Nothing to warrant a criminal
investigation was found.
But appearances on "Larry King Live," "Sally Jessy Raphael" and other
TV shows followed, as did the 1995 book "Daddy Was the Black Dahlia
Killer," which Knowlton wrote with Michael Newton and which chronicles
her lurid tale of incest, rape and multiple murders.
Though she later slipped from the limelight, Knowlton remained
obsessed with the Black Dahlia and over the years continued offering
her input into the bizarre mystery.
"Any time we ran anything about the Black Dahlia case, she'd leave
long, rambling voice messages on my answering machine at The Times,"
said Larry Harnisch, a Times copy editor who wrote about the Black
Dahlia for the paper in 1997 and is writing a book on the case.
But he did not hear from Knowlton after the 2003 publication of "Black
Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder," a book by retired LAPD Det.
Steve Hodel that became a national bestseller. In it he makes a
compelling but controversial case that it was his own father, the late
physician George Hodel, who murdered Short.
Recently, Harnisch's curiosity was piqued by Knowlton's silence after
a Nov. 21 Los Angeles Times Magazine article on Hodel. Harnisch began
investigating and discovered that Knowlton, 67, had died March 5 at
her home. The Orange County coroner's office classified the death,
which escaped public notice, as a suicide from the combined effect of
five drugs.
Jolane Emerson, Knowlton's stepsister, told The Times last week she
didn't believe that Knowlton, who took various prescribed medications,
had meant to kill herself.
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"I think what happened is she just overdosed accidentally," Emerson
said.
She acknowledged that her stepsister's alleged memories, which
included Knowlton's assertion that her father molested her when she
was a child and that he sadistically killed others besides Short,
strained family relationships.
"Her book was trash, and it wasn't even true," Emerson said. "She
believed it, but it wasn't reality. I know, because I lived with her
father for 16 years."
Emerson said her stepfather, a foundry worker who died in a 1962 car
crash with his young son Kevin, "could be meaner and ornerier than
heck, but he wasn't a killer."
Police in Los Angeles and Westminster placed little credence in
Knowlton's Black Dahlia story when it surfaced.
"The things that she is saying are not consistent with the facts of
the case," John P. St. John, an LAPD homicide detective, told The
Times in 1991.
Psychiatrists and experts on post-traumatic stress disorder who
appeared with Knowlton during her talk-show appearances, however,
found her story plausible.
The Boston-born Knowlton, who moved from Lynn, Mass., to Westminster
in 1945, said she had been suffering from depression, anxiety and
panic attacks for a number of years when she underwent a hysterectomy
in 1985.
After a massive injection of estrogen, according to her book, her
health deteriorated rapidly. At the same time, she experienced
intensified feelings of terror and had persistent thoughts of suicide,
she said.
Jim Frey, Knowlton's therapist and a specialist in adults who were
abused as children, spoke to The Times for a 1993 story on Knowlton.
He said studies of post-traumatic stress disorder had found that
replicating the adrenaline-charged state a person was in when first
traumatized could trigger emotional responses or memories of the
event."