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Neotone
Joined: 04/22/02
Posts: 70
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Digesting a (crazy!!) movie
Saturday, October 14, 2006 at 4:35 AM
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Okay, I've watched an interesting movie, (hillarious, and in fact parts are fairly pornographic, which the people at the video store didn't TELL me  ) so I'm also going to be converting it into philosophy—digesting, as it were.
The three sections here are philosophy, footnotes, and art. That means, the philosophy comes first, followed by the art, followed by an artistic criticism.
It's important, firstly, to tell why I'm writing this. It's a weird film, and a very strange subject for philosophy. But the issues in the film are pertainant not only to the contemporary world, involving the current War on Terror and the resultant social phobia and xenophobia that I think have manifested in America. People are scared of each other—studies have shown a loss of close confidants, and also a decreasing number of friends.
This story involves those ideas—confidence between friends, mainly in the form of sex—and also acts of violence which aren't very similar to terrorism, but still have similar aspects. The obvious similarities are violence, and lack of information. We don't know what Jenifer says, because she moans and giggles instead of talking. Thus, we can't decide whether she's lying. The monster, Jenifer, in the outset has been characterized as one who allures and ultimately destroys. Of course, this involves a lack of confidence.
The movie is completely ridiculous, and even prurient (with a capital '' ) but it DOES raise some interesting ethical questions. The questions deal with Karma, mainly, and at a deeper level, free will. (There are also layers of questions, including, for example, when do you pull the trigger? If ever? Note: this question I won't discuss at all, because it's pretty obvious that you don't hurt people.)
When you go into something, you can come out of it two ways. Way one, without hurting yourself. Way two, with hurting yourself. If we can grant the idea that hurting others, in a social species such as Humans, hurts the self (insofar as both entities are said humans,) or even within two members of the same ecosystem, hurting1 others hurts the self.
That said, the question within the context of the movie "Jenifer"—what I will politely call a made-for-TV comedy film—is extremely intricate. The film is obviously supposed to be a horror flick, so there's supposed to be "good guys" and "bad guys," or at least one "monster." The question becomes, whom is hurting whom? Or is anybody really hurting anybody at all? That question is hardly answered, except by gratuitous violence.
From an artistic standpoint, I dislike the ending. And I'll get into that later. And although that seems an aside, it really is not, because the idea seemed that of a "full circle" mentality, which is a dorky one.
What I mean by this is that it's impossible to create love by hurting people, so the act of destroying one person so that another person can live, still involves hurting one person. And naturally, these results of hurting one person apply to more people at the point of hurting the person than the results of allowing another person to live.
When a person is allowed to live, and another is hurt, he may not be immediately taking action to remedy the hurt (although he may be, in which case you're damn lucky =P ) but, the effects of hurting a person are more than immediate. Logically, the decision to hurt a person comes before the act, and the degradation of society begins there. The decision to hurt a person also can come later, as in the case of a possible accident (especially a willing accident2—I will use the latter because it is more philosophically interesting). The hurt may have been physically done by another person, who isn't fully conscious of the actions taken. As said before, Humans are social beings. That means they are sometimes subservient to each other, logically, because of the definition of social—meaning they act together. Together requires "one" with "other," and "other" requires the existence of "one," which means subservience.
This leads to another important question—the idea of telling the whole truth, which again, is associated with current world events. The idea of one type of world—what may be called a post-9/11 world, mainly involving in-trial statements that are suspect, and people who may be be detained without evidence and without the ability to make statements that may or may not be judged—means that the truth of a person's guilt or innocence won't be obtained. The problem with the lack of information is, of course, that the person not giving the information naturally refuses to be subservient, and thus refuses to participate in social action. But the idea of a trial judge, is that he decides, based on the evidence (or at least, based on the fact of presence of the individual) whether or not to judge the individual in a certain way. This requires "together," because the judge and the one judged must be together. Otherwise, there would be no trial. The action of judging someone requires that the other person exist in some way, which of course requires "other," which requires subservience. In this situation, nobody does anything, because the judge is unwilling to view the evidence (or, if you want, be subservient to the evidence) and the one judged also refuses to be subservient.
To summarise that last paragraph—in a judging situation, if one person does nothing to achieve evidence, and the other does nothing to give evidence, social interaction is not done. If social interaction is not done, the best way to put it is: the solution is inhuman by virtue of not being human (because humanity requires social interaction.)
As to the question of whether anybody really is hurt in the film Jenifer, it's difficult to answer. So I won't.
Footnotes: (the '1' and '2' in the first section)
1) Hurting in this sense doesn't simply involve pain, or even, in some (RARE) cases, death. What hurting DOES involve, is things that degrade others. Examples include terrorism. Terrorism hurts the self, because it degrades A) the quality of warfare (to the point where highly chancy and possibly unethical means are necessary) B) the quality of consciousness of possible targets for terrorism, and C) the quality of consciousness of the terrorist. It's safe to say, I think, that these qualities that are expressed hurt not only the terrorist, and the subject of terror, but also everybody else—because it's impossible to rule out possible targets, due to the inductive reasoning involved, and it is also impossible to rule out possible terrorists, because of the degradation of the quality of warfare. (That is, the information gathering involved in terrorism, is at best spotty, as well as the data relating to target location, and other things, simply because of the nature of terrorism as an individual, secretive type of act. I can't really go much further into terrorism, because I am by no means an expert.)
2) A willing accident is, simply, assenting to an action that is not the same as the actual action. Such things in one sense happen because it is possible to recognize something after an action that isn't like the thought before the action. But in a sense, they do not happen, because if the action is not known, then the action is not assented to, insofar as assent requires knowledge. Besides, logically, it's impossible because you cannot know an action until the action happens, insofar as knowledge requires the event happening.
Literary critique:
Now, since I'm a filmmaker, I'm going to look at the film and tell you what I think of its artistic merit.
As a whole, I liked the film. I thought Jenifer was funny, and the Clint Eastwood smile was a nice touch. I thought some of the things that happened were a bit gratuitous.
And as I said before, I didn't like the ending. The ending didn't quite work, because nothing was resolved. Though in a sense, things were resolved by the hands touching. The movie seemed playful though, which is a good thing.
Eating the little girl was just crazy. Wtf? It wasn't particularly funny, though the scene worked, and it gave the right motivation to the main character.
The acting was AMAZING. For this type of film, everybody did really amazing work. I was very surprised. And Jenifer was very well-played.
In all, I was impressed. Not bad people. Though I think violence has been better done by Captain Ahab in some of his music videos. 
This life is a joke, and nobody's laughing.
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Multi-Panel
Joined: 09/23/01
Posts: 217
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RE: Digesting a (crazy!!) movie
Sunday, October 15, 2006 at 12:40 AM
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interesting read 
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Neotone
Joined: 04/22/02
Posts: 70
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RE: Digesting a (crazy!!) movie
Monday, October 16, 2006 at 8:43 PM
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Thank you mr. Ludo, and I'm actually a bit surprised you read it... I bet no one else did
This life is a joke, and nobody's laughing.
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absurdist lover
Joined: 09/04/01
Posts: 223
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RE: Digesting a (crazy!!) movie
Tuesday, October 17, 2006 at 5:19 AM
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What film was it?
I will teach you the significance of insignificance
http://www.artistserver.com/Sendy
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Mercurial
Joined: 05/27/01
Posts: 41
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RE: Digesting a (crazy!!) movie
Tuesday, October 17, 2006 at 8:44 AM
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absurdist lover wrote:What film was it?
Also curious.
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Kylo
Joined: 02/16/05
Location: San Francisco
Posts: 787
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RE: Digesting a (crazy!!) movie
Tuesday, October 17, 2006 at 10:11 AM
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I'll admit, I read about a quarter of the way. That's a long one.
"Energizer bunny arrested- charged with battery."
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Multi-Panel
Joined: 09/23/01
Posts: 217
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RE: Digesting a (crazy!!) movie
Wednesday, October 18, 2006 at 1:17 AM
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ok i just focused on the word pornographic.
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Neotone
Joined: 04/22/02
Posts: 70
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RE: Digesting a (crazy!!) movie
Friday, October 20, 2006 at 6:11 AM
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Multi-Panel wrote:ok i just focused on the word pornographic.
lol
It's actually an episode in a TV series called "Masters of Horror." The "episode" is called "Jenifer."
It's not really very good. But it is watchable, and it brings issues to the table.
This life is a joke, and nobody's laughing.
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