VLVL(5) At the Movies and on the Tube

[Michael Joseph]

> > > --- Otto <ottosell at yahoo.de> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > What about the strange idea of describing his "inner
> > > > feelings" by a movie-quote? It doesn't make those
> > > > feelings very authentic.
> > >
> > > But the question here then, is exactly when are
> > > feelings "authentic" or otherwise?  Especially in any
> > > given description/expression/whatever thereof?  When
> > > is any such description NOT a "quote" of some sort?
> >
> > My immediate response to Otto's question ... would it be better if Zoyd
> > quoted Shakespeare?
> >
>
> It's no question of better or worse but I got struck by the expression
> "inner feelings". Of course I've spent my time before the tube and went to
> the movies but I've never expressed my 'inner feelings' by a film quote.
> I've never said: I feel like Robert de Niro in "Taxi Driver", or Bruce
> Willis in "The Fifth Element". I once drove an old lady who said to me when
> I started the engine: "Energie" - which is what Kirk says in German before
> the Enterprise gets off into hyperspace.

But this kind of quoting, which decenters the notion of a privileged set
of cultural constructions inherently possessing greater authenticity or
immediacy, is exactly how John Barth says writers *should* express their
"inner feelings," the only means available to them in a postmodernist age.


Michael