tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post7316993924763962290..comments2024-03-18T19:05:39.072-07:00Comments on Morphosis: Keanu Achilles: John Wick and Modern AngerAdam Robertshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15803399373213872690noreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-2653944571335249302017-01-31T21:45:19.789-08:002017-01-31T21:45:19.789-08:00Very nice information. I hope john wick chapter ...Very nice information. I hope <a href="http://goo.gl/fqbSyN" rel="nofollow"> john wick chapter 2 </a> is much better than as compered to previous chapter. Everyone is so excited to watch john wick chapter 2.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12151054502712085370noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-25472503598127590452016-02-29T19:52:50.605-08:002016-02-29T19:52:50.605-08:00Running across this happily reminded me of Simone ...Running across this happily reminded me of Simone Weil's beautiful piece "The Poem of Force," even if only an orthogonal way. http://biblio3.url.edu.gt/SinParedes/08/Weil-Poem-LM.pdfCosmohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08521074763990381859noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-14208219382989171762016-02-25T08:41:35.577-08:002016-02-25T08:41:35.577-08:00Thanks, Nick! Interesting article: we can but hope...Thanks, Nick! Interesting article: we can but hope.Adam Robertshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15803399373213872690noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-78760887759780357082016-02-23T04:41:53.798-08:002016-02-23T04:41:53.798-08:00Great article Adam,
Sure you've seen this Gua...Great article Adam,<br /><br />Sure you've seen this Guardian article on curbing online aggression, referring to Stephen Pinker's 'Better Angels Of Our Nature' http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/22/play-nice-how-the-internet-is-trying-to-design-out-toxic-behaviour Nick Woodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18223456651858138591noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-6211543988584137512016-02-23T02:31:14.057-08:002016-02-23T02:31:14.057-08:00Terrific piece of writing. I like the Aristotle q...Terrific piece of writing. I like the Aristotle quote about gods and animals outside the city - and maybe there's something here about that different articulation of revenge that is found in Jacobean drama. Revenge there moves the anti-hero outside of the bounds of society (or at least societal norms), enabling him to comment freely on the everyday idiocies and hypocricies of that society, but he never moves outside of the city. The revenge motive kick starts the plot, but it is the satirical impulse that energises the language, and leavens the drama with a pleasing thread of humour. John Wick on the other hand was largely humourless - the consequence of divine wrath perhaps?Ruzzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12275149878354848397noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-56316046652011554612016-02-20T08:23:01.501-08:002016-02-20T08:23:01.501-08:00Vibrato wide enough to throw a cat through, as a s...Vibrato wide enough to throw a cat through, as a singer friend of mine says. Alan Jacobshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06777218862490842180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-51474012302300279842016-02-20T07:54:07.816-08:002016-02-20T07:54:07.816-08:00Isn't this actually the core? We do want to b...Isn't this actually the core? We do want to be Achilles/John Wick. We want it to be our anger that matters. We want it to be our thinking the rules and receives the glory. Eve's apple would make her like God. We don't want to be like Creasy, because Creasy's path saves the woman at the expense of himself bailing out the Father who didn't have a way out. The world sees something very ugly in Creasy. All the girl sees is her Creasy-bear. Wick lives, but Creasy knows his fate once he starts. Wick adds to his fame, Creasy finds redemption in the eyes of the girl, and the world appears to win. Except that he has freed the girl. Markhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01245846091197203725noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-82115856210591732872016-02-20T07:28:47.944-08:002016-02-20T07:28:47.944-08:00That's some hard-core vocal vibrato Elvis give...That's some hard-core vocal vibrato Elvis gives us, on that song.Adam Robertshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15803399373213872690noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-6978291815560633992016-02-20T07:25:01.614-08:002016-02-20T07:25:01.614-08:00You haven't seen John Wick? Persecute the here...You haven't seen <em>John Wick</em>? Persecute the heretic! Burn him!Adam Robertshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15803399373213872690noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-53822285294291758932016-02-20T07:21:06.977-08:002016-02-20T07:21:06.977-08:00I should confess that I'm going into all this ...I should confess that I'm going into all this in order to disguise the shameful fact that I haven't seen <em>John Wick.</em>Alan Jacobshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06777218862490842180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-14665834450174266182016-02-20T07:14:11.389-08:002016-02-20T07:14:11.389-08:00Well noodled, well noodled indeed, sir. You are on...Well noodled, well noodled indeed, sir. You are on to something, though I'm not sure just what. There's something noteworthy about the task of judgment, the role of Judge, being transferred as it were from the Father (Psalms again: "For he comes, he comes to judge the earth") to the Son ("He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead"). <br /><br />Interesting also, though, that this transfer may have played a role in the rise of Marian piety, especially as developed by people like Alphonse de Liguori — there's an amazingly schlocky song called "Miracle of the Rosary" that says, " Only you can hold back your holy Son's hand / Long enough for the whole world to understand." The Son who judges becomes as frightening and unapproachable as the Father? <br /><br />The Day of Judgment is as you say the <em>Dies Irae</em> but isn't it odd that in German it's called <em>Der Jüngste Tag</em> — The Youngest Day? I'm sure that means ... something. <br /><br />More important than any of this, though: here's Elvis singing "Miracle of the Rosary": <br /><br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQAGgItL90UAlan Jacobshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06777218862490842180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-86006122571309624232016-02-20T06:43:09.915-08:002016-02-20T06:43:09.915-08:00Thanks, Richard! I can't disagree with what yo...Thanks, Richard! I can't disagree with what you say here. Indeed, I'd go further and say that the actual rounded human being in the first 15-20 mins has no actual connection with the beautiful, balletic and lethally ruthless killing machine of the rest of the movie. The connection is purely notional. And it does deflate some aspects of the whole: you never really believe Old Russian Gangster Guy when he says 'John Wick was not the boogeyman; he was the guy you sent to kill the boogeyman'. Nah. Keanu is many things in this movie, but he's never actually scary, the way (I absolutely agree) Washington is properly scary in <em>Man on Fire</em>.Adam Robertshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15803399373213872690noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-6981815570039973192016-02-20T06:38:18.189-08:002016-02-20T06:38:18.189-08:00Not to encourage such noodling or anything ('S...Not to encourage such noodling or anything ('Say No to Noodling!'): but this puzzled reader is still minded to insist upon quite a radical difference between John Bible Part 1 and John Bible Part 2. The OT is about fathers, the NT about a son. This means that what happens to the main agents in the OT, because they are patriarchs, is actually happening to whole peoples. The scope is much wider. Hence things like the globe-spanning interventions of Babel, or the Flood. But bloodline-of-Christ Temple-of-Sion conspiracists seem to me to miss something crucial about the NT: that in this book Christ is very particularly not a patriarch. He's not the start of David's line, but on the contrary the end of it. Which is the point Paul picks up on by universalising his message: it's because Christ is not the patriarch of one tribe that he can be the saviour of all. Something I've said before, and which I can't unpack except with many thousands of words, is relevant here I think: sons aren't angry like fathers are angry. The Father is still there, in the NT of course; but the focus of the story is not centrally about fathers any more. Of course, I appreciate that we are all staring down the barrel of 'the Great Day of His Wrath' in Revelation: but maybe we ought to be putting the emphasis there not on wrath, but on <em>day</em>.Adam Robertshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15803399373213872690noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-14563233713593994152016-02-20T06:30:50.386-08:002016-02-20T06:30:50.386-08:00Most genuinely do I regret the 'effortless spa...Most genuinely do I regret the 'effortless spades' phrase.Adam Robertshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15803399373213872690noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-19418774157223830942016-02-20T06:15:03.860-08:002016-02-20T06:15:03.860-08:00What you say about Achilles worrying that he's...What you say about Achilles worrying that he's not angry enough — that returns when he accepts Priam's ransom despite going through agonies because he fears that this acceptance might mean that his wrath has not been adequate to the cause, Hector's murder of Patroclus. Thus he prays to Patroclus: Please don't be angry with <em>me</em>...<br /><br />About the Biblical narratives, I write not as a believer but as a puzzled reader. The pattern, as best I can understand it, is that in the Hebrew Bible the wrath of God is very personal — e.g., God repents that he has made man and decides to destroy his creation — but somewhat changeable — he does not in the end kill us <em>all</em>. (Thus the Psalms: "Thou hast taken away all thy wrath: thou hast turned thyself from the fierceness of thine anger.") So the anger of the God depicted in the Hebrew Bible seems to me χόλος-like. By contrast, the wrath of God in Paul's letters seems impersonal but unchangeable — it never goes away, it is a permanent feature of God's response to sin, mandated by His very nature; only its target can change, when the wrath is (as you say) turned on His Son and therefore Himself — and this strikes me as more μῆνις-like. <br /><br />Both accounts of God are and are meant to be terrifying, but the impersonal wrath of Paul's God (especially as riffed on by, say, Jonathan Edwards) strikes me as much more terrifying — and in much the way that Achilles is terrifying, though the wrath of Achilles turns out in the end to be placable after all. <br /><br />Anyway. The ability to noodle pointlessly about such matters is one I have in effortless spades. Alan Jacobshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06777218862490842180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-17003877344442723302016-02-20T04:21:31.042-08:002016-02-20T04:21:31.042-08:00Corollary to this, of course - your comment about ...Corollary to this, of course - your comment about "You don't want to be Achilles, believe me." The same applies to Man On Fire - you wouldn't want to be John Creasy. But once you get past the initial grief of losing a loved one (which, let's face it, we all have to at some point in our life), I think I could quite enjoy being John Wick.Richard Morganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06362854587900716888noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-59528076579949489552016-02-20T04:13:57.527-08:002016-02-20T04:13:57.527-08:00Very sharp, very interesting post - I also enjoyed...Very sharp, very interesting post - I also enjoyed John Wick out of all proportion to what it seemed to deserve. However, I have a feeling that's down more to technical than to metaphysical factors; it was beautifully shot, beautifully choreographed, and Reeves, as you say, has a magnificent screen presence. In terms of emotional impact, there were a few spikes of genuine power; Reeves facing himself in the bathroom mirror, the empty house; Willem Dafoe at the funeral - "It's just days like this, mixed in with all the others"; Wick shattering the concrete covering his arsenal in the basement; some of the early scenes with Michael Nyqvist as the gangster Daddy. But for the most part it felt more like watching a fireworks display. Interestingly enough, I think the emotional affect flattened in direct proportion to how close we moved to the action and the core of the story. I felt we "knew" Wick better in the first 15 - 20 minutes of the movie than at any subsequent stage - by the end he'd become a Schwarzenegger-style cypher. I suppose you could argue that this represents his ascendance from mere mortal to iconic demigod status, but I thought it was far less impressive than, say, Man On Fire, where the emotional stakes ramped up throughout the movie and made for a far more compelling narrative experience. And I'd say what the latter movie captured that Wick failed to get was the properly classical sense of dread and tragedy that accompanies the exercise of implacable godlike rage - there's never any sense that Wick coming back is in any way a bad thing, it's all just supercool and fine and harmless to decent woodland folk like you and me, whereas there's something genuinely terrifying about the awakening of John Creasy in Man On Fire, a sense that *anyone* could get hurt, that it won't matter because he'll shred anything that stands in his way. And the film is at pains to point out that Creasy is already morally bankrupt from the start, that he's already done horrific unjustifiable things; we never get that sense with Wick. I'd say that puts Creasy much closer to Achilles territory than Wick ever gets.<br /><br />That said, I'll probably be there for John Wick 2.<br /> Richard Morganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06362854587900716888noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-40432337057585948942016-02-20T01:14:14.867-08:002016-02-20T01:14:14.867-08:00Alan: I take the force of what you say of course. ...Alan: I take the force of what you say of course. I suppose one of the ways of talking about the different varieties of Christian would be to determine what the mix is in their faith of Wrath-y OT with Forgiveness-y NT; there needs to be some of the former, I suppose, since I am come not to destroy the law, but to fulfil, and all that. The two elements do have rather different emphases, though, don't they? And the NT ought perhaps to be more front and centre? I don't know.<br /><br />I daresay it's annoying to have an infidel treat one's faith according to the standards of internal consistency of an elaborately plotted D&D campaign, or something: but where Christ stands to take God's wrath that would otherwise be directed at humanity (which I totally see) that's also God standing to take His <em>own</em> wrath. <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172071" rel="nofollow">Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea</a> because only the sea was <em>big</em> enough to endure his wrath without being destroyed: I've always assumed Christ's substitution was something along those lines.<br /><br />Of course I see the 'impersonal' aspect of OT divine wrath (although I suppose there's probably more forgiveness in Jahweh's wrath than I'm allowing here: floods but also rainbows, losing his temper with Job and afterwards making it up to him). And I agree absolutely about the impersonal, inhuman quality of Achilles' wrath. The really terrifying moment for me is when he rages at Hector that he (Achilles) is not angry <em>enough</em>, 'I wish my rage were enough to enable me to eat you raw ...' even as he hacks him down.Adam Robertshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15803399373213872690noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-23774112271618717762016-02-19T16:54:16.040-08:002016-02-19T16:54:16.040-08:00What a superb post, Adam. I wonder about one thing...What a superb post, Adam. I wonder about one thing, though: your claim that the Christian God isn't characterized by μῆνις. In one sense this is definitely true, because μῆνις is not a New Testament word; but the wrath of God (either ὀργή or θυμός) is certainly a strong theme in Paul's writings, and is often described by commentators as connoting not anything like anger but an utterly implacable intolerance of sin — and in this implacability the wrathful God is not altogether unlike the wrathful John Wick. Thus Barth (whom as you know I have been reading lately): "The forgetting of the true God is already itself the breaking loose of His wrath against those who forget Him (1:18).... Our conduct becomes governed precisely by what we desire. By a strict inevitability we reach the goal we have set before us." <br /><br />Wrath of this kind is profoundly impersonal, which is also, I think, the truly terrifying thing about Achilles, whom Homer consistently describes, after the death of Patroclus, in nonhuman terms: you cannot plead with him any more than you could plead with a stone, he is like the Dog Star that brings disaster to men, etc. Paul's picture of God's wrath seems to me to resemble this; God's wrath never abates, but rather is redirected when Christ stands in my place and bears that wrath that should by rights be mine.Alan Jacobshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06777218862490842180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-64891103671776530102016-02-19T14:00:33.796-08:002016-02-19T14:00:33.796-08:00"John Vick-ar". Don't make her angry..."John Vick-ar". Don't make her angry.Adam Robertshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15803399373213872690noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-7320821279649177412016-02-19T13:58:27.377-08:002016-02-19T13:58:27.377-08:00Interesting. I enjoyed John Wick: I had never real...Interesting. I enjoyed John Wick: I had never really thought about why. Perhaps, as the husband of a Vicar, I should now be worried...Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17256244895723910890noreply@blogger.com