What/Who I'm Communing with Now
communications and art that I want to share that I am partaking in now
Friends, Americans, countrymans,
I wanted to make my first real content post accessible for me and for you (lol my one follower rn—Easton, I’m looking at you).
So, I thought that I would start with sharing what I am communing1 in and trying to learn from now on this fine spring break. This week started out with nice weather here, 70 degrees and sunny on Monday. But then, it turned awfully misty British pea soup and tea weather for the past three days. It is a white cloud sky outside, and dark rain at night, very fitting for watching twin neonoir films with perhaps the most concise and cogent advocations for the humanity of bioengineered beings2
go:
Listening/Watching (also on Spotify or wherever you get Podcasts from), on the recommendation of my friends the Pruitts:
“Raising Kids in Sodom w/ John Henry Spann” on Pints with Aquinas with Matt Fradd
UPDATE:
They talked about Telescopic Charity, which I found very interesting.3 At first I mistook the term to mean multiple levels, like a telescoping action of a thing like a telescope amirite?, but actually what it means is that one is looking lightyears away from oneself and one’s immediate environs and neighbors to the far-away lands of poverty/oppression, etc. It is like people who’d never heard of Uganda before who were more worried about Invisible Children Kony 2012 than they were about homelessness in their town, or people who are more concerned about the Ukrainian crisis now, or the genocidal oppression of Uyghurs in China than the opioid epidemic here. That does not mean that you can’t care about both. I believe that you should. Rather, what is important is that you make sure to turn the telescope back into yourself for a sec because “if you wanna make the world a betta place, take a look at yourself and make the cHANGGEEEE!” [or just because who wants to use a telescope all the time. The night sky is far more beautiful and majestic with the right clear sky and the naked eye]. In short, the Telescopic Charity notion is that the British Victorians (and we too now) gave far too much of their attention and charitable wealth to vast, extensive, imperial-like organizations far away—think about our expenditures on short-term missions and transcontinental NGOs too—while at the same time being utterly blind to the sheer poverty of their fellow countrymen next door, down the road, and underneath the bridge.4This is a great fear of mine, when I am interested in politics/globalism, etc. but especially when we consider giving to something large, that we are getting sucked into something ultimately so far from us. Telescopic charity is the complete opposite of the principle of subsidiarity.
Reading, on the recommendation of my friend Father Ryan Adorjan:
“A Meditation on Givenness” by Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II5
Watching, on the remembrance of myself of how good these movies are:
Blade Runner (1982 og) but actually the director’s final cut (2007) which I swiped (i bought it!) from Goodwill in 2018 to watch for the first time in my life
+ Blade Runner 2049 (2017) (halfway through it)
if you haven’t watched either, and you wanna spend hours musing on what it means to be human and what it might mean to be an bio-organic slave who longs for freedom, have we got a show for you!
Warning for both:
There are one/two scenes of female nakedness in each, which are used as critical commentary on objectification of women, per my interpretation, but may want to be skipped over by those who would not like to see them. If you can stand it and it is good and not ill for your soul, withstand the movie unedited (perhaps you haven’t heard of VidAngel which I have never used but heard good things of), then bear the movies as they are and learn from how they represent misogyny/abuse/sexual sins what have you as a piece of art, not as a piece of lust or misogynistic directing/acting etc. Which I think is an incorrect interpretation of the film, though not without its merits as a critical lens. The first one in the original Blade Runner is when he is pursuing Zhora into the club/brothel, which is commentary (also a theme in the sequel) on how female Replicants are used in the sex work industry.
P.S. on the warning—with two * S * P * O * I * L * E * R * S * [if you don’t care about getting things spoiled, or reject the concept like me, read on while I ramble on]—If you start to feel nervous during the scene in the 2049 when Joi and the prostitute combine, don’t skip it until after they awake. The scene means to communicate so much and it is not one with nakedness in it. The following scene is what has the brief shot of nakedness. Another common misinterpretation is in the sequel, Wallace knifes a naked female Replicant who he just ‘created’ in his Dr. Frankenstein moonshot at making Replicable Replicants (females with fertile wombs). Since she is not fertile, he kills her out of his frustration, in addition to wanting to see what Luv’s reaction would be. This is all very interesting, but can be horrifying to some viewers. Wallace is like Tyrell in the original but this time played by Jared Leto as perhaps an even creepier and more dehumanizing tycoon-tyrant who is a poetically blind self-cyborg. W thinks that Replicants are expendables who are used for his purposes of gaining filthy lucre. Pretty healthy dose of realism, tragedy, and horror as he watches and makes his right-hand enslaved Replicant Luv watch unnamed barren-Eve bleed out because of his wrath that she is not worth human dignity [or does W also throw out humanity as a concept?].
UPDATE:
on to this lecture on “What is Matter?” by Prof. Ed Feser now :) Warning, you’ll probably only enjoy if you’re a philosophy-head
and considering whether Ghost (i luv embedded links btw, if you can’t tell already) would be better? Just realized that Substack takes a tithe (literally 10%) of anything you make…
to share one's intimate thoughts or feelings with (someone), especially on a spiritual level.
Ripped from the Wiki, which you shooulllld just watch the movie to understand the dramatic-emotive context. To be clear, * N * O * N * E * of this is mine or my words :)
the tragidrama speech:
‘I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to die.’ - Ron Batty
“Sidney Perkowitz, writing in Hollywood Science, praised the speech: "If there's a great speech in science fiction cinema, it's Batty's final words." He says that it "underlines the replicant's humanlike characteristics mixed with its artificial capabilities".[14] Jason Vest, writing in Future Imperfect: Philip K. Dick at the Movies, praised the delivery of the speech: "Hauer's deft performance is heartbreaking in its gentle evocation of the memories, experiences, and passions that have driven Batty's short life".[15]
The Guardian writer Michael Newton noted that "in one of the film's most brilliant sequences, Roy and Deckard pursue each other through a murky apartment, playing a vicious child's game of hide and seek. As they do so, the similarities between them grow stronger – both are hunter and hunted, both are in pain, both struggle with a hurt, claw-like hand. If the film suggests a connection here that Deckard himself might still at this point deny, at the very end doubt falls away. Roy's life closes with an act of pity, one that raises him morally over the commercial institutions that would kill him. If Deckard cannot see himself in the other, Roy can. The white dove that implausibly flies up from Roy at the moment of his death perhaps stretches belief with its symbolism; but for me at least the movie has earned that moment, suggesting that in the replicant, as in the replicated technology of film itself, there remains a place for something human."[16]
After Hauer's death in July 2019, Leah Schade of the Lexington Theological Seminary wrote in Patheos of Batty as a Christ figure. She comments on seeing Batty, with a nail through the palm of his hand, addressing Deckard, who is hanging from one of the beams:
Then, as Deckard dangles from the steel beam of a rooftop after missing his jump across the chasm, Roy appears holding a white dove. He jumps across to Deckard with ease and watches his hunter struggle to hold on. 'Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.' Then, just as Deckard's hand slips, Roy reaches out and grabs him – with his nail-pierced hand. He lifts up Deckard and swings him onto the roof in a final act of mercy for the man who had killed his friends and intended to kill him. In that moment, Roy becomes a Christ-like figure, his hand reminiscent of Jesus's own hand nailed to the cross. The crucifixion was a saving act. And Roy's stunning last act – saving Deckard when he did not at all deserve saving – is a powerful scene of grace.[17]
Mark Rowlands (2003), The Philosopher at the End of the Universe, pp. 234–235, “Roy then dies, and in perhaps the most moving death soliloquy in cinematic history...”
The place named "Tannhäuser Gate" (also written "Tannhauser Gate" and "Tanhauser Gate") is not explained in the film. It possibly derives from Richard Wagner's operatic adaptation of the legend of the medieval German knight and poet Tannhäuser.[18] The term has since been reused in other science fiction sub-genres.[19]
Joanne Taylor, in an article discussing film noir and its epistemology, remarks on the relation between Wagner's opera and Batty's reference, and suggests that Batty aligns himself with Wagner's Tannhäuser, a character who has fallen from grace with men and with God. Both man and God, as she claims, are characters whose fate is beyond their own control.[18]”
https://www.thecircumlocutionoffice.com/bleakhouse/charles-dickens-telescopic-philanthropy/
Is this an inappropriate reference and embedded link? I sure hope not.
PC: Photo by Ajayjoseph Fdo on Unsplash