Copellia

[John Bailey]

I'm always interested by how damn often in the human (at least
western) imagination we imagine our creations will rebel against us
eventually. Robots, especially - it's as if we're sure they'll try to
kill us all as soon as they're smart enough to think like us. Really
neurotic of humans to project that onto something that doesn't even
exist yet, I reckon.

Has extra connotations for the US, given that it's a creation that did
(successfully) rebel against its creator.

On Wed, Jan 1, 2014 at 2:55 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> I guess the most important aspect of all of this neo-human engineering is
> that deus ex machina. Even so benign a being as Slothrup might cost you your
> balls.  The Creation often confounds The Creator, but only because of the
> Creator's willfulness.  This is also the story of Faust:  willful self
> creation via artificial means.  Both the same cautionary tale.
>
> David Morris
>
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 31, 2013, David Morris wrote:
>>
>> P knows his Freud, and he knows opera.  He is well versed in automata and
>> Frankenstein, as well as the golem,  He hasn't done clones yet...
>>
>> Clone Returns Home (2008)
>>
>> http://variety.com/2008/film/reviews/the-clone-returns-home-2-1200472620/
>>
>> Trailer:
>> HKAIFF 2009 - 複製人懷鄉曲 The Clone Returns Home - trailer
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, December 31, 2013, John Bailey wrote:
>>>
>>> Yeah, Coppelia is based on ETA Hoffmann's short story The Sandman,
>>> which was the major text Freud used to explore his theory of The
>>> Uncanny (and good stuff on voyeurism and castration). Very influential
>>> story and essay. Dunno if P read either but I've never been able to
>>> read V. without seeing them everywhere in the novel. V is the human
>>> who transforms themselves into an object, and makes real the horror
>>> implicit in the ballet (it's more obvious in the story, which doesn't
>>> have a happy ending.)
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jan 1, 2014 at 9:12 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > Watching the movie Tetro, a scene from the ballet Copellia, the broken
>>> > doll,
>>> > is portrayed. I'd never heard anyone mention the ballet in V. In light
>>> > of
>>> > Copellia, which seems so obvious to be its reference.
>>> >
>>> >  http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copp%C3%A9lia
>>> >
>>> > Coppélia concerns an inventor, Dr Coppelius, who has made a life-size
>>> > dancing doll. It is so lifelike that Franz, a village swain, becomes
>>> > infatuated with it and sets aside his true heart's desire, Swanhilde.
>>> > She
>>> > shows him his folly by dressing as the doll, pretending to make it come
>>> > to
>>> > life and ultimately saving him from an untimely end at the hands of the
>>> > inventor.
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l