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Thursday, January 25, 2007

What The Heck Is Writing?

I cannot yet answer the question posed in the title. However, I am able to say that when I came to write my review of the film Notes On A Scandal
( http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2007/01/film-review-notes-on-scandal.html ),
I had a very different approach to it relying on my interpretation of the grammar of the Imagery and the grammar of my Emotions.

I was quite content to accept the cinematic observation of Dench's character that the Blanchett character was shallow. As soon as I touched upon this in writing, I realized this was a stupid, self-serving evaluation of Sheba's character. And I mean ' as soon as'! It was as if one form of consciousness- adequate for observation, recall, and the interpretation limited to Images and Emotions- gave way to another form of consciousness - one more attuned to understanding, making distinctions, seeing connections more subtle than those easily discernible by the Logic of Images.

The film began to bear an uncanny resemblance to The Queen, a film where the interest of the tabloid press and the public seems to be unnaturally focused on the sensational and the lurid, rather than on the good works of the individual who is unfortunate enough to fall under this particularly coarse lensed microscope.

In The Queen, Lady Diana is the focus of the emotions of the crowd and the press. One feels sure that it was not her labours in the field of outlawing land mines that led to the more intense outpourings of grief. It was something else; something evocative of someone's guilt, someone's shame, someone's failure, someone's ending of innocence, something of the long and final trek through the tunnels under the surface streets of Paris where wolves are behind and the unearthly light is at the far, other end. All due to writing. Very neat.

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