From: Erin Noonan (enoonan@kent.edu)
Date: Fri Oct 04 2002 - 04:14:57 BST
Did Pirsig write somewhere about why he turned down the
movie. From reading LILA I got a different
interpretation then you. I think Pirsig reaction makes
sense.
I thought the problem was that the filmmakers were
limiting the input of the artist in the making of the film.
Redford tells him he can come to the set but "not every day".
It wasn't about making a film but about the rights
to the input of the film.
pg 287 Lila
"What he was talking about was artistic control.
In a stage play there's a tradition that nobody changes the playwrights's
lines without his permission, but in films it's almost standard to completely
trash an author's work without bothering to mention it to him. After
all he sold it didn't he?"
If he had no artistic rights then a film had potential
to trash his work.
erin
>Hi people,
>
>In Lila, after Phaedrus has digested his meeting with the great celebrity
>Robert Redford, he writes "But what he saw at this point was a social
>pattern of values, a film, devouring an intelletual pattern of values, his
>book. It would be a lower form of life feeding upon a higher form of life.
>As such it would be immoral."
>
>I strongly disagree that films are entirely products of the social level.
>That is, I can see how many films, eg Hollywood standards, act as social
>glue and do reinforce prejudices, but it is also quite clear to me that film
>is an intellectual and artistic medium just as valid at putting across ideas
>as a book - possibly more valid. (I think this is related to Pirsig's narrow
>conception of the fourth level, as purely intellectual, rather than
>individual and inter-subjective [a nod to John B there]).
>
>Anyone out there want to defend Pirsig on this? If we want to talk about a
>particular film, how about this comparison:
>
>"He also used to wonder if there was a higher farmer that did the same thing
>to people, a different kind of organism that they saw every day and thought
>of as beneficial, providing food and shelter and protection from enemies,
>but an organism that secretly was raising thee people for its own
>sustenance, feedin upon them and using their accumulated energy for its own
>independent purposes."
>
>OR
>
>"We return to the power plant that Neo escaped from where
> we see human beings looking almost blissful in their
> gelatin cocoons.
>
> MORPHEUS
> The human body generates more bio-
> electricity than a 120-volt
> battery and over 25,000 B.T.U.'s
> of body heat.
>
> Outside, spreading all around the power plant, beneath a
> breathing greenhouse, are the growing fields.
>
> MORPHEUS
> We are, as an energy source,
> easily renewable and completely
> recyclable, the dead liquified and
> fed intravenously to the living.
>
> Huge farm-like reapers are harvesting the crop.
>
> MORPHEUS
> All they needed to control this
> new battery was something to
> occupy our mind.
>
> We see inside a clear tubular husk. Floating in viscous
> fluid, there is a human fetus; its soft skull already
> growing around the brain-jack.
>
> MORPHEUS
> And so they built a prison out of
> our past, wired it to our brains
> and turned us into slaves."
>
>Does Pirsig really put the point across better than the Wachowski brothers?
>I'd be interested to hear what y'all think about this.
>
>
>Sam
>www.elizaphanian.v-2-1.net/home.html
>
>
>
>
>
>
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