Mourning a Lost Culture
Mar 18, 2022When we are grieving, is it a good idea or a bad idea to engage with art that takes grief to be its subject? Does this help us to cope, or does it rip out whatever stitches we have managed to sew in while we try to bear an unbearable loss?
Comments (5)
Harold G. Neuman
Sunday, February 13, 2022 -- 5:50 AM
An affectionate nod to ourAn affectionate nod to our friends in BC. My nephew is a musician/singer/songwriter in Vancouver.
I am fond of the Canadian art culture and happy for the success of my kin.
Tim Smith
Friday, March 18, 2022 -- 10:11 PM
There is no tension betweenI think Alex has misunderstood The Power of the Dog.
There is no tension between Phil and Peter. One is a man, and the other is a shadow of manhood. Peter states a definition, protect your mother, then murders Phil to get it done. There is only one man in this film, and it is Peter. Masculinity is redefined to unabashed attention to one's sexuality regardless of the Power of the Dog. That Peter sees it right away emasculates Phil. Take a drag of that anthrax ciggy and reimagine gender expression as a dominant masculine path. And, of course, protect your feminine kin while you are at it. A new masculinity is defined and masterfully executed by Kodi Smit-McPhee.
Devon
Monday, March 21, 2022 -- 8:43 AM
For what it's worth, onlyFor what it's worth, only about a third of what Alex recorded with Josh and Jeremy made it into the program: https://soundcloud.com/philosophytalk/alex-king-2022-uncut
Tim Smith
Saturday, March 26, 2022 -- 9:03 PM
It is worth it. Cleary AlexIt is worth it. Cleary Alex understood the movie.
I like both these movies and the conversation was to the point. It was funny when Alex loses her train of thought. Production sometimes can miss the train.
Good ride though. Thanks for taking the time to respond.
Daniel
Tuesday, June 28, 2022 -- 6:42 PM
The brilliance and compactThe brilliance and compact unity of evenly distributed ambiguities make "Power of the Dog" a viable candidate, even if not successfully achieved, for a Dionysius award. Its potential flaw, preventing the viewer's imagination from filling in the gaps in collaborative exercise with its production-elements, describable as narrative autonomic healment which is characteristic of great works of film, like "Deliverance" of 1972 or the several films produced by Frederick Hobbes during that same period, is the token female character of Rose used as a narrative bond which ties the two male characters, the dutifully masculine Phil and the comfortably doesn't-need-to-be-masculine Peter, together in a reversal of gender-role recognition which moves from traditional appearances to comprehensive realities which are given emphasis by being set in an environment of ranch work and cowboy's attire. The Rose character serves the purpose of complicating the relationship between the two males and driving their opposing tendencies into each other, but remaining relatively one-dimensional herself, and therefore playing no able role in what needs to be assumed in imaginative interpretation to bring the ambiguities together. Besides this possible defect, however, it arguably fulfills one salient standard of intellectual enhancement in cinematic context: a film with many loose ends which the viewer her/himself successfully puts together.