errantember: (darth bobo)
[personal profile] errantember
I've followed up watching Dangerous Beauty (for the second time) with watching Moulin Rouge (my virgin experience.) There's a special kind of depression these two movies inspire, and, pausing half way through MR, I feel the need to put it down somewhere. The thing that bothers me about both of these movies is my total lack of faith in their messages. I do not believe in either courtly love or the idea that the existence of musicals somehow lifts up the human race. I feel very strongly that courtly love and the idea of an endless NRE experience is a poisonous falsehood that's lead to more human misery than anything besides war. And the thing that makes this belief hurt the most is that, like millions of others out there, I *want* to believe in the Perfect Relationship that Fixes Everything Forever, and that Love Conquers All, etc. And if both movies were just limitless romantic cheese, it would be easy to write them off as fluff. But in both cases, the fallacy of the idea of Perfect Love Forever is a strong undercurrent, forming a poignant juxtaposition that really cuts to the quick. And here again, if that's where it ended, I might be able to suspend my disbelief long enough to really get into things. But at least in Dangerous Beauty, the Final Message that, despite all the Little Difficulties (empires at war, sleeping with scores of people you don't love, the unexpected arrival of the Spanish Inquisition) it's possible to Make Courtly Love Work, and that members of the audience should Go For It, turning into the same lethal propaganda the rest of Madison Avenue is selling us.

It's hard to say if the failure of Ideal Love or the popularity of over-produced musicals is a worse tragedy for humankind. As a rule I passionately believe that musicals, like puns, are something the world would be better off without. And it's not that it's impossible to produce fantastic examples of each, because it is. But the incredible psychic damage done to the universe by the mainstream majority completely eclipses any possible benefit even the most fabulous gems could provide. I'd flush all my favorites away tomorrow if the rest went with them. I'd even be willing to take credit for doing so and be burned at the stake by musical theater fans everywhere. My death would be a small price to pay to free humankind from their pernicious influence forever. But I know it wouldn't help. Like a homophobe's mislead belief that "putting 'em all on an island somewhere would solve the problem," purging history of musicals and puns would be, at best, a temporary respite from the inevitable, as future "enthusiasts" squeezed forth the next generation of artistic defecant.

I don't really feel any better now , but at least I've whipped up a good lather of snobbishly righteous indignation to counterbalance my depression and ennui. Maybe now I can get off on Nicole Kidman in the most expensive outfit she's ever worn.

Or maybe not. *sob*

I also wanted to note...

Date: 2008-12-09 05:11 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] errantember.livejournal.com
...that I have a very large, serrated kitchen knife sitting *right* *here* next to me on the couch, and if Nicole Kidman's character somehow escapes death through some magical "Power of Love" bullshit, I'm going to cut out my own spleen, then decapitate myself with a slow, deliberate sawing motion.

No spoilers, please. :)

Date: 2008-12-09 05:16 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] silverize.livejournal.com
with ya here on the love thang.

Date: 2008-12-09 05:20 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kiki39.livejournal.com
You need to watch more opera, dear. Courtly love AND they all die in the end, heh. Problem solved.

Oh, and Baz Luhrmann's "Australia" is awesome. Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, cute kids, and stunning landscape make you forget about NRE...

Date: 2008-12-09 07:11 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] errantember.livejournal.com
Despite being way into amazing singing in solo and in groups, and really liking fabulous costuming, I *hate* opera. I believe my summation in a previous post was "a bunch of idiots in love who fail to own their own feelings, then whine about it at high volume."

And no, it's not because I haven't seen the right one, or the right production. I'm sure there are exceptions here, too, but nothing to justify the genre.

Oh. My. god.

Date: 2008-12-09 03:21 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] bramblekite.livejournal.com
You hate opera and disdain musicals.

I love you forever.

Re: Oh. My. god.

Date: 2008-12-09 03:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] bramblekite.livejournal.com
Now let me sing a song about it...

*snicker*

Just kidding.

Date: 2008-12-09 07:22 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] errantember.livejournal.com
Actually, it's not true that I hate opera. It's that I'm emotionally unaffected by it. I get more of a rise out of baking a cake. It was hard to keep my rude, humorous comments to myself during Madam Butterfly. Luckily I was with a comedienne, so I was in good company. The scene in the middle where she's waiting for her philandering asshole husband to come home is longer, by itself, than all operas put together should be allowed to be.

Considering I'm working toward doing some form of musical theater myself right now, I'm feeling a little conflicted.

Date: 2008-12-09 08:47 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kiki39.livejournal.com
Opera is definitely one of the weirder forms of entertainment known to humankind and falls under the category of Things that Require Immense Efforts of Suspended Belief (but then, I've always thought the same about Gaming, heh).

Date: 2008-12-09 12:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] worldmegan.livejournal.com
HAHAHAHA

This is a lot of how I feel about opera -- I don't put up with the bullshit, and prefer to cackle at it. I AM emotionally affected by the MUSIC, and occasionally some of the libretto, but it takes a pretty down-to-earth segment for me to really appreciate it. I love all the hopping around and yowling that characters do in opera. It's absolutely smashing.

I also do appreciate a lot of things -- operas, musicals, etc. -- just for the STORY of it. But I think I (maybe) totally get where you're coming from and I happen to be lucky enough to have a nice dark line in my head between "stories for fun" and "stories to model my life after". ^_^

Date: 2008-12-09 05:49 am (UTC)

Date: 2008-12-09 07:22 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] errantember.livejournal.com
Thank you.

Date: 2008-12-09 06:10 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] austingoddess.livejournal.com
What I'm hearing is a rant against manipulating the masses into some idealistic feeling that If It's True Love, It'll Work Out.
I love musicals myself. Not all of them - it gets spotty in the 50's, for instance - but I love to sing mediocrely to myself. Gimme some Sweeney Todd or Little Shop of Horrors or Jesus Christ Superstar (except for I Don't Know How to Love Him) anyday.
Musicals have no sort of market-cornering action on the above. Almost *all* romantic tales have a happy ending. We tend to not be satisfied if they don't, like someone skipped the dessert.

FWIW, I couldn't take Moulin Rouge for more than 15 minutes.

And my pet rant is over movies that purposefully bring you down just so they can take credit for bringing you back up at the end. Lost puppies? The death of an innocent? Life-altering illness? Terrible tragedy X? Grrrrrrr. Severely manipulative.

Date: 2008-12-11 02:06 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] errantember.livejournal.com
The manipulative and erroneous message is part of it, but a lot of it is just the fact that although I like *all* of the elements that go into musicals, I hate the art form passionately. Having people tell stories by getting up on stage and singing about them, is *so* likely to produce something awful that it just shouldn't be done. It's like saying that the second amendment gives every American citizen the right to posses nuclear weapons. I like Les Miserables. I like Camelot. I like Fiddler on the Roof. I suspect The Producers is probably brilliant, especially since it's a self-mocking musical. But if some super-power alien race gets access to the musical theater offerings of the human race, they're going to kill us all, probably without even the tiniest modicum of hesitation, to prevent the Horror from spreading elsewhere. Moulin Rouge alone would probably amount to a death sentence for us all. I've never seen an opera that was worth sitting through, either, and I've seen at least a representative sample.

It's ok to disagree with me. There are things that I love that a lot of other people hate. Brussel Sprouts are a good example. But it's hard for me *not* to take it seriously. I'm not sure why my hatred is so strong. I feel the same way about puns. When I meet someone who's obviously really into them, I have a hard trouble restraining my violence. And I genuinely think that if I saw someone like that walking out in front a moving bus, I wouldn't save them. It definitely seems irrational and unhealthy. Especially for someone who plans to take poly-oriented theatrical music on the road as part of his career.

Date: 2008-12-11 01:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] austingoddess.livejournal.com
I hear you, I do. I'll go watch my musicals in my corner and have a grand time of it. :) I do appreciate the ones with some actual storyline to them, and not the generic Hollywood story told in song, which is my primary complaint about the ones in the 50's and thereabouts.

But if you want to share some brussel sprouts (boiled only to a bright green and with butter) sometime and writhe in pain when someone lets loose with a pun, I'm there.

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