Hell is Other People

Perhaps.

Last night went to the theatre to see a movie. "A Girl Cut in Two" or "La Fille coupée en deux" as our brother is France would call it. Directer by Chabrol. It was good. Not great. Over commercialised, I would say. Nouvelle Vague should leave you asking question, of yourself the characters and the reality of the film and the reality of reality. The good ones do. The play of absense is a little more center for Nouvell Vague, at least in my mind. It is in the absense of detail or the too-muchness of detail that we get sucked into the film itself. Because I know options exist, options plural, it is in the play of these possibilities that I get lost. If I am told every conclusion it is no fun. See Aurerbach's Mimisis for more on this idea. So went the movie. As my friend said, Chabrol is no Godard.

What made the film slightly more aggrevating was not the movie itself but the people at the theatre. Let me elucidate. The threatre is small. It is in a converted storefront, the building perhaps built in the 1920s. It is a very quaint place. Seating only 30, it harks back to old time picure show. Felt curtains of rich red drape the walls. A single attendant, no doubt a film student somewhere the single attendant. As my friend and I walk in, we are greeted by a group of seven or so, later middle-aged people. Loud, perhaps a bit drunk, they ask for our names and introduce themselves. We comply. They continue to ramble amongst themselves and attempt to bring us into their conversation. "Are you sure you want to go to this movie?" What an idiotic question, why else would we be hear I think? "You sure you want to sit in front of us?" Again with the questions that have been answered by the reality of the situation. Of course, as beings possessing free will or acting under the illusion of it we have made a decision if decisions can be made to sit in front of you.

Yet they continue to ramble. Bastards. The most talkative woman of the bunch informs us that her friend "Andrew" has written a book and acted in Hollywood. I turn around; sitting with a well groomed salt and pepper beard and a white turtleneck, is a mna in his late fifties. The illustrious Andrew chimes in "My book is in its second eddition." The drunken woman continues talking about Andrew's personal history, nothing I wish to hear. I cannot stand these people. I wish I would have said that my dissertation is in paperback and that you can pick it up at Barnes and Noble. It has a pretty cover so idiots like you might pick it up. I didn't. Of course that isn't true. There is really not a lot worse, relatively, than the pseudo-intellectual hob-knob. The people in some kind of film club that go to movies simply because they have subtitles. They can't talk about the film after they see it. At least anything beyond simply plot summary. They give people who enjoy film a bad name, and they deter the enjoyment of those same people while they are in the theatre.

Just like the Oprah book club, these people think they are in the know, some kind of avante guard party of culture, where in reality they destroy it. It reminds me of a poster I saw once, with a familiar phrase" Culture is Dead" written on a burning book. Spawned from the kitsch that has become culture, these people are the same. These are the people who read a book because of the Oprah approved sticker, who buy the books with pretty covers to stack their bookshelves. They might memorize the plots from sparknotes and have a few witty things to say about each book, but nothing beyond that. I have been to parties with these people. You ask a question, they give you the "themes and motifs" section of sparknotes. Same with film. They see what they are "supposed" to see. They have a list. A line by line of all the directors they are supposed to see. Have they read Cahiers du Cinema? Puzzled looks, the response.

Am I a snob. No. I plead ignorance. I know I have not seen everything, I don't know all the histories, I have only a small understanding of French. To paraphrase Socrates, I can only know I know nothing. These people are the worst kind of ignorance. They think they know (only what they are told) and spout their "knowledge" at every oppertunity. It is like culture zombies. They are the vestige of the living dead, the undead, culture between both living and dying but not either. Culture isn't dead, it is un-dead. A more powerful gesture, and it is these folks who embody the un-dead spirit. Walking (reading, viewing, talking) aimlessly with only dead facts that they continue to try to bring to life with no conscious thought behind them, attempting to assimiliate more to their collective and horrifying the people who know what is going on.

It is a shame you can't shoot them or hit them with a board like they do in the movies.