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Villains in
James Bond movies have cats; at least Ernst Stavro Blofeld of SPECTRE is always
stroking his Persian cat.
Dogs are for
"regular" guys. Cats are for genocidal psychopaths. Dogs are so
trusting and unconditionally loving; they even feel guilt and shame and remorse.
Cats are egocentric, chilly, reserved, manipulative, cunning, violent and
vicious. At least that's what the movie shortcuts
reflect.
Chessboards -- Sherlock Holmes remarked
that skill at chess was the mark of a devious mind, someone not to be
trusted.
I don't want to give anyone the wrong
idea. Bjork doesn't know I'm coming to Iceland. Bjork doesn't know I'm. But if I
were Bjork and I were in Rekjavik, I think I know the all-night convenience
store she would frequent around 2:30 a.m., up near the Althing. So it could
happen.
What's polska for
"egghead"?
Oh yeah oh yeah "A Clockwork
Orange" and Alec's obsession with Ludwig Van. It gets to the core of the
question "Does the love of great music of necessity nurture a great
soul?"
The other rather unpleasant answer is
Arthur Miller's screenplay for "Playing for Time," with Vanessa
Redgrave and Jane Alexander -- the women at Auschwitz who staved off death by
forming an inmates' orchestra, playing the great (and not-so-great) classical
music of Europe for camp administrators and visitors, and playing to calm the
nerves of inmates being marched to their deaths. PfT has the unfortunate quality
of not being fiction, but truth; its conclusions are not as easy to dismiss as
Burgess's. Jane Alexander plays the orchestra conductor; she was Mahler's
niece.
Does the love of great music of
necessity nurture a great soul, an ethical person, a humane person? Or is it
every bit as likely that genocidal maniacs are buying the same sheet music and
CDs that we are? Does great music then have no value at all, no rigid link to
ideas, no link to philosophy, no link to history or any real human events or
experiences? Maybe the title says "1812 Overture," but it really
doesn't mean or express anything at all -- just an hour of lovely
notes.
Elmer
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