“Interpreting” Curious George — in this case, in the guise of Werner Herzog:
One of those dealies you just wish you’d thought of first, y’know?
h/t Sarah.
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I have given up on you wingnut, but that is the best thing you have posted in a long time.
That reading is completely absurd.
Everybody knows that George represents the forbidden urges of the Id, which inhabit the deepest recesses of the dark jungle, an obvious representation of the subconscious.
The man is the devil; his hat, the forbidden fruit. George’s tumble into the water from the ship is his baptism into the structured world of the superego, which resists George’s untamed behavior even as it guides him into the zoo, again an obvious representation of sexual repression and the foolish worship of imaginary sky gods.
I used to teach it as a post-colonialist tale; then a homo-erotic tale (that HAT!); and finally from the perspective of feminist studies: where are the women?
It’s great getting students on the hook, then throwing out the reveal: I can do all that WITH THE SIGNIFIERS PROVIDED. But in the end, do you really think the authors INTENDED any of that stuff? And if not, why in the world would I want to argue that the book means any such thing?
I was too lazy to watch until the end. So, this corporate master removes George from his idyllic existence as one of Gaia’s children, and when George demonstrates that he cannot conform to the world-raper’s society, confines George to a prison? Typical white male behavior. And they depict all the prison’s inmates as being happy in their confinement. Brainwashing must be involved.
This tract is apparently some justification for locking up those who will not conform to patriarchical rules. It may be trying to say something about clamping down on free-spirited beings to crush their psyches and turn them into automotons. More thought is required.
The version where George never sees the hat, because earlier he is caught and eaten by a lion with the scraps picked over by vultures, was rejected as being un-instructive of the evil that is mankind and portraying good Mother Gaia in a bad light. Rewrite was compulsory.
For those who haven’t been reading Jeff forever, the interpretation of Curious George has a hell of a provenance around here. His initial post from 2005 is a must-read, looking at the story in reference to criticism of Peter Jackson’s King Kong. It came up again shortly thereafter, when Jeff linked to a piece on a Hollywood adaptation of CG. It popped up again in 2008 after the Vogue cover with LeBron and Giselle.
(I understand that a joke explained is a joke ruined, but I figured our newer folks deserved some exposition.)
Heh.
“And what does the fat man get for his trouble? A broken jaw… and to be laughed at… by mousies.”
As good a post as any to re-introduce folks to The Postmodern Essay Generator.
Speaking of must-read PW cornerstones … is it time to update the leftist boilerplate?
“Political criticism, including the sociology that now calls itself cultural materialism, converts Freud’s analytical suspicions into political ones. A poem is read as if it were a dream, the product or the symptom of both the writer’s unconscious and the various discourses of the time in which the text was written. The poem is read as if it were covering something up, as if it were an alibi that is rather too fluent to be entirely trusted. And as befits an alibi, the critic responds forensically and “interrogates” the text for those moments in which the poem seems to be displaying its stresses; where, in effect, it is sweating.
“These are the moments where an anxiety is being repressed. Having found these moments, the critic then announces that the real subject of the poem is this anxiety, or the struggle to hide this anxiety. Forget daffodils, nightingales, autumn: they are not what lyric poems mean, not what they are about. Political criticism merely makes the anxieties political, which will be anxieties about the fact that it is a poem and not a piece of writing that pursues justice. Having been caught out, the poem is triumphantly led off in golden chains; the detective writes up his report in hideous prose, making sure to flatter himself a bit, and then goes home to a well-deserved drink.”
— James Woods, “In the beginning”, _The New Republic_, Mar 29, 1999
I’d love to have the same narrator read an illustrated Passover Haggadah. Just to see what my mother would look like speechless (something, alas, I’ve never witnessed lo these 34 years).
Non-stop talker for 34 years? Contact Guinness. Not the brewers, the world record people.
why in the world would I want to argue that the book means any such thing?
So that you can avoid having the author’s worldview challenge your own. And so that you can turn everything every written into a piece of Marxist agitprop, the way
Godintended.I think one would need the brewers more in that situation. If you purchase enough, they might home deliver.
Ummm…from one of you’re lesser lights? THAT WAS HILARIOUS!!! It reminds me that sometimes? a monkey is just a monkey …. Did I pass professor?
I want to see Curious George drag a giant steamboat over a mountainside or find out that Ian Curtis hanged himself watching this.
The new HBO series “The Pacific” is set to start March 14.
It’s supposed to follow 3 Marines from 1st MarDiv across several battles, John Basilone, winner of the MOH, who died on IWO, Robert Leckie who wrote “Helmet for My Pillow” and Eugene B. Sledge who wrote “With The Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okanawa”.
“With the Old Breed” is one of the finest, most gripping war narratives I’ve ever read.
Tailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e99B80crU3E
Contact Guinness. Not the brewers, the world record people.
IIRC they are,or at least were, one and the same. Of course stout is as good an approach to a non stop talker as any other…
A newer leftist boilerplate? Well, dust off Boooooshitler, because that will never lose it’s luster for several more generations. Rove is mostly faded, but Cheney is still kicking ’em in the teefs, so he gets to stay. Add Rush of course, and Beck, sprinkle in some ‘Zionist Lobby’, and don’t forget wailing about the polar bears (pbut).
Oh. And that gal who gave us “you betcha!”. She might make up at least a quarter of it.
Did someone mention Kong? and racism? That was so yesterday.
And it’s “Awesome Kong” to you, buddy.
Our dog certainly thinks her Kong is awesome.
Was reading today a post and comment thread about the very silly noose-troversy at UCSD.
One of my favorite bits:
Some indignant person–Ignoring negative “values” of symbolisms is to embrace amnesia.
Response at
March 2, 2010 at 10:20 am by Mike McGee – You read too much cultural theory. I know because you pluralized “symbolism.”
Is George really curious or is that just how we are interpreting his actions? Can we know his true intentions?